


As a Desert in Bloom

by ImpishTubist



Series: As a Desert in Bloom [1]
Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Angst, Illness, Kid Fic, Language, Original Character Death(s), Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-23
Updated: 2015-04-23
Packaged: 2018-03-25 04:32:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 25,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3796798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ImpishTubist/pseuds/ImpishTubist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eight years after <i>Voyager</i>’s return, the members of her crew have gone their separate ways. Tom, reeling from a recent loss, reconnects with Chakotay. He soon finds himself wrestling with long-suppressed desires and old anger--and a brand-new danger that threatens the life Chakotay has built for himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [notluvulongtime](https://archiveofourown.org/users/notluvulongtime/gifts).



> I did a lot of hand-waving when it came to medicine, science, legalities, etc. The history of Chakotay’s people and Dorvan V is a mix between what we know from VOY canon, what was established in TNG’s “Journey’s End," and what I just made up myself. In this version of events, Tom and B’Elanna never ended up together. Anyone you don’t recognize belongs to me. 
> 
> This is a birthday story for the wonderful Notluvulongtime (though I don’t know if it’s possible for anyone to have as much fun reading this as I did writing it, so it’s kind of a selfish gift). Nonetheless, I hope you had a wonderful birthday, and I’m sorry this is a little late. The storyline, er, got away from me.
> 
>  **Edit:** This fic now has a book cover and a manip because Notluvulongtime is just too kind to me! They can be found [here](http://notluvulongtime.tumblr.com/post/117282352514/fic-cover-and-manip-for-impishtubists), and they're absolutely gorgeous!

 

 

 

Every word of Kathryn Janeway’s speech grated on Tom’s nerves.

 

He sat in the front row with most of _Voyager_ ’s former senior staff, his expression carefully schooled into one of rapt attention for the reporters who prowled the vast hall, filming holo-vids for their reports and for the archives. Janeway stood at the podium in front of them and addressed the audience of three hundred - most of them dignitaries and Starfleet admirals, all of them come out to mark this anniversary of _Voyager_ ’s return to Earth.

 

Tom hated being reminded of this date; of the seven years spent on a ship where everyone but him was trying to return home. He’d carved out a life for himself there, a new family, and it had all ended upon their return to the Alpha Quadrant. And Starfleet insisted on marking every damn anniversary of that return.

 

It seemed to make sense that they would mark the first five anniversaries, Tom admitted grudgingly. But then years six and seven rolled around, and only half of their usual number showed up to the ceremony in San Francisco. There were other commitments now - new jobs, growing families.

 

And now they were marking the eighth year since their return to the Alpha Quadrant, and it all seemed so pointless. The ceremony was always organized by the higher-ups, because _Voyager_ ’s journey symbolized for them the height of Starfleet ingenuity and innovation. It was something to be celebrated, and _Voyager_ ’s officers were to be revered. It was subtle but terribly effective propaganda, Tom realized. The ceremonies celebrated what Starfleet training could provide for you - the wits, courage, and intelligence to survive seven years stranded in an unexplored part of the galaxy.

 

Never mind that half of their number had never been through Starfleet training in the first place; that they had gained their wits and ingenuity just by trying to survive while on the run from both Starfleet and the Cardassians.

 

Very few of the former Maquis ever attended this ceremony. In recent years, only B’Elanna showed up, and even then it was only because Tom asked her. Because he didn’t want to face this alone.

 

Especially not this year.

 

“Sure that’s what you need right now?” B’Elanna asked him later, when the speeches had been made and _Voyager_ ’s crew had been left to mingle with the dignitaries and diplomats who showed up to the ceremony. Tom had drifted over to the bar, largely avoiding the attention of anyone who might want to have a few words with _Voyager_ ’s helmsman.

 

“Been waiting for this all day, B’Elanna. You aren’t going to spoil it for me,” Tom said lightly as the bartender poured his glass of ale and pushed it across the bar to him. He _meant_ it lightly, at least, but it came out bitter and pathetic. He took a large swallow of his drink to keep from having to say anything else.

 

B’Elanna sipped water, which only made Tom feel worse. Wasn’t all that long ago when she would have joined him; when she would have sneered at the pompous admirals and the way they had the _Voyager_ crew performing for them like monkeys.

 

“Where do you suppose the Doc is?” Tom asked as the silence stretched to an uncomfortable length.

 

“Conference of some kind,” B’Elanna replied. “I’m surprised Harry didn’t make it.”

 

She looked at him, as though waiting for a response. Tom gave a little shrug; he wasn’t Harry’s keeper. B’Elanna’s eyes widened fractionally.

 

“What, haven’t you spoken to him?”

 

“Sure I have,” Tom said automatically, though he had to think a moment to figure out when their last conversation had occurred. Three months ago, maybe. Perhaps four.

 

“This is ridiculous, Tom,” B’Elanna said, lowering her voice as she leaned closer to him. “You can’t do this.”

 

“Do what?”

 

“Shut us out,” B’Elanna hissed. “Harry’s your closest friend. You can’t isolate yourself - not at a time like this.”

 

“A time like what?” Tom asked, forcing an edge into his voice - wanting her to say the words.

 

B’Elanna backed down, tried a different tactic. “You should take some time off. Get away for a while. I hear they’re running you ragged on Rigel Prime.”

 

Tom shook his head. “They need good pilots in the Rigel system, and I’m the best there is. No way, B’Elanna.”

 

They worked him to the bone on Rigel Prime, there was no denying that. But Tom _needed_ that, needed to be so run down that by the end of his shifts all he could do was fall asleep. It kept him from thinking - unlike the long, empty journey to Earth for the ceremony on a shuttle that had no distractions, where he could do nothing _but_ brood.

 

B’Elanna put a hand on his arm, a gesture so unexpected and tender that he flinched.

 

“I’m serious, Tom.” She held his gaze. “You should get away for a while. Get out of your head. Look, I’ve been there, okay? I know what it’s like.”

 

“Yeah, well, unless you’ve got a better suggestion than just _get away_ , I think we should just stop talking about this.” Tom drained his ale and pushed the glass across the bar. He caught the bartender’s eye and signaled for another.

 

“I do, actually,” B’Elanna said. “Talk to Chakotay.”

 

Tom frowned. “Chakotay? What the hell does he have to do with this?”

 

“Might do you some good to have a familiar face around while you work through - whatever this is,” B’Elanna said. “And Chakotay’s living about as far off the grid as you can get these days.”

 

“You’ve talked to him?” Tom shouldn’t have been so surprised. Chakotay had only been close to a handful of people on _Voyager_ , and of them all he’d known B’Elanna the longest. If he would talk to anyone, it would be her.

 

B’Elanna snorted. “If sending messages every few weeks and having him reply to every sixth one counts as _talking_ … then yeah.”

 

“What’s he up to?” Tom thought back to the last time he’d seen Chakotay - it must have been shortly after they were released from quarantine at Starfleet Headquarters. They’d been taken directly there from the ship, and had undergone exhaustive medical tests and debriefings for a solid week before they had finally been released to properly enjoy their homecoming. Chakotay resigned his field commission that very day, and hadn’t been seen since. He’d never come to any of the ceremonies.

 

“He’s been keeping busy,” B’Elanna said vaguely. “You want to talk to him, you send your messages to a woman on Gamma Canaris IV named Sveta. She routes them to Chakotay. Don’t worry - they always find their way. Even if it takes him months to respond.”

 

\----

 

Tom didn’t think much of B’Elanna’s suggestion over the next couple of days. In fact, he tried to do very little thinking at all. He had two days to kill before the next shuttle headed out to Rigel Prime, and he spent most of them prowling the bars in downtown San Francisco. The bar scene hadn’t changed much since his time at the Academy - the clientele here was perpetually in their twenties. Tom, at forty-six, got a few odd looks, but it didn’t stop him from getting lost in the music and the drink and the noise.

 

His dreams were odd affairs those two nights, filled with a brawny figure who had no face and no voice but whose familiar, searing touches had Tom waking up to sticky sheets each morning. He hadn’t had dreams that intense since he was a teenager. Far from being thrilling, it was simply disconcerting.

 

Two days into the five-day shuttle journey back to Rigel Prime, Tom finally ran out of distractions - two novels B’Elanna had loaned to him, both of which he’d read in a day - and found himself staring at a blank PADD.

 

_Chakotay,_ he started writing without really thinking, and then stopped. What the hell was he supposed to say from there? _Haven’t spoken to you in eight years, but hey, mind if I come stay with you for a while?_

 

Why was he even considering this in the first place?

 

Because he was curious. Because he’d known Chakotay for seventeen years, and yet hardly knew him at all. Because he’d shared a ship and even a bed with him, once upon a time.

 

Because he was looking for a distraction, and there was none better than the Maquis warrior who never let anyone get too close. The man who had been offered everything he had ever dreamed of - a full pardon, a professorship at the Academy - and abandoned it for a life in isolation.

 

If there was one thing Chakotay valued above all else, it was stark honesty. Tom stared at the PADD, at the single word he’d written, and then penned exactly what he had been thinking.

 

_I saw B’Elanna the other day, at the anniversary festivities in San Francisco. She suggested I come see you. Feel like having a houseguest for a while?_

 

When the message was on its way to Chakotay by way of Sveta, Tom dropped the PADD to the floor and stretched out in his bunk. Just three more days. He could manage it until then.

 

\-----

 

It was such a relief to return to Rigel Prime, Tom nearly wept. He was back in the pilot’s seat of his favorite ship within three hours, and he didn’t step foot on land again for another fourteen. It was bliss.

 

Tom was responsible for running missions to the outer planets of the Rigel system, which were uninhabited but rich in untapped resources. He served as both astrogator and pilot on these missions, ensuring that mining teams got to and from the planets safely. He was also sometimes tasked with missions out to the asteroid belt, which were more dangerous but also yielded an abundance of resources that couldn’t be found anywhere else in this half of the quadrant. Business was booming in this system, and it wasn’t showing any signs of slowing down.

 

He worked eighteen-hour shifts over the next several days, oftentimes sleeping for an hour here and there on his vessel before taking the controls again. The next time he saw the inside of his seldom-used apartment on Rigel Prime, eight days had passed. Tom made it as far as the couch in his living room before he collapsed, and he slept for a solid twenty hours.

 

When he woke, it took him a minute to realize it was because of his computer terminal. The computer was chiming softly but insistently, and Tom dragged himself across the room to see what the fuss was about.

 

_Tom - Yes, that would be fine. Attached are the documents you’ll need to travel here_.

 

Tom rubbed his bleary eyes and stared at the message again. No signature, but it had come by way of Gamma Canaris IV. Chakotay, then, and a lightning-fast response at that. But why would Tom need documentation in order to travel to wherever Chakotay was now living?

 

He accessed the documents and read them twice, sure that his groggy mind was playing tricks on him.

 

“Son of a bitch,” Tom muttered finally when he realized that this was no illusion. Several things became clear to him at once as he scanned the documents again, not the least of which was why Chakotay was routing his messages through a third party and why he hadn’t been to Earth in years.

 

He wasn’t even living in Federation space anymore.

 

\----

 

Tom didn’t know how many strings Chakotay had pulled to get him passage into Cardassian space, but he would guess that it was a lot. The borders had been locked down following the war’s end. Only humanitarian ships were allowed through, and even then the crews were thoroughly vetted. Civilians on either side of the border were not permitted to cross it for any reason - not to see family, or to relocate, or to vacation. Perhaps the laws would relax years down the line, but Tom didn’t see it happening anytime soon.

 

He got passage to Dorvan V on a medical ship headed to Cardassia Prime, where he was listed as a field medic - even though he hadn’t practiced medicine in the field since his time on _Voyager_. While Dorvan was not technically a scheduled stop along the medical ship’s route, it wasn’t too far off. When they were at their closest - two days away from Dorvan at warp three, the fastest ships were allowed to go now in Cardassian space - the captain of the medical ship gave Tom use of one of their shuttles.

 

“We’ll rendezvous with you here in three weeks on our way back to Earth,” he said. “And if you’re not here -”

 

“Yeah, I know,” Tom said, fighting not to roll his eyes. “I risk breaching about a dozen agreements and inciting another war.”

 

The captain glowered at him. “We can’t come after you, you know. We have to stick to our route precisely. No deviations for any reason.”

 

“I’ll be here,” Tom assured him. “Don’t worry.”

 

Dorvan V was a lonely little world on the edge of Cardassian space, barely the size of Mercury and home to a meager population of two thousand people.  But they were Chakotay’s people, the tribe he’d left behind as a teenager to join Starfleet. And this was the home he’d been absent from for more than three decades, during which time it had been signed over to the Cardassians in one of the many treaties prior to the Dominion War. And though some annexed worlds had been returned to the Federation following the Dominion’s defeat, this was not one of them.

 

Tom had read, briefly and years ago, about the incident involving _Enterprise_ and Dorvan V - about how the flagship of the Federation had been sent to resettle the colonists, and how they had ultimately refused. They had chosen to submit themselves to Cardassian rule rather than abandon their homes and their planet. And now even the Cardassians had abandoned them. They had withdrawn from this planet like they had many others that existed along the frontier, choosing to pull in closer to Cardassia Prime. Dorvan V had effectively been forgotten - they were legally out of reach of the Federation, and neglected by the Cardassians.

 

From orbit, Dorvan V looked about as inviting as Mars - that is to say, not very. The entire world appeared to be a vast desert. From this height, there was no discernible vegetation. Tom started the de-orbit burn sequence, and he began the delicate process of piloting the shuttle to the surface. There was no orbital authority on this planet, no flight control that he needed to clear his flight plan with or ask for landing clearance. He only had the coordinates Chakotay had provided for him, a landing spot that was apparently on the edge of the colony.

 

The buildings of the colony were almost indistinguishable from the dusky-red soil. They materialized out of the dusty landscape when Tom was nearly on top of them. Small homes surrounded the settlement, with larger buildings in the center that were probably used for common purposes - storage of surplus food, schooling, governing, and the like.

 

He put the shuttle down on the outer edges of the settlement, as instructed. He powered down the ship and locked its console, so that it would answer only to his touch when he boarded again in three weeks. Then, Tom shouldered his bag and opened the hatch.

 

Bright light from the unrelenting sun, filtered and dimmed by the shuttle’s viewscreen earlier, now assaulted him as he stepped out of the shuttle. Tom put up a hand to shield his eyes, and it was several moments of furious blinking before he noticed that he wasn’t alone.

 

“Nice landing.” Chakotay took a step towards him. “The terrain’s too rocky for big ships, and even shuttles sometimes have a rough go of it. You haven’t lost your touch.”

 

“I’d hope not.” Tom held out his hand, and Chakotay grasped it briefly before releasing him. “Thanks for having me. I didn’t realize you were…. well, out here.”

 

“That was the point,” Chakotay said. He pushed a hand through his hair - more silver now than black, and a bit longer than Tom remembered. It was disconcerting to see him in civilian clothes, though the outfit wasn’t too different from what Tom remembered of his Maquis leathers - brown trousers tucked into knee-high boots and a shirt of muted green. “Come on, you can drop your bag at the house.”

 

It was a short walk to Chakotay’s home - no more than fifteen minutes. His house was located on a stretch of gently sloping land, and Tom could see most of the settlement from this vantage point as it sprawled across the landscape below them.

 

“Did you build this yourself?”

 

Chakotay snorted and nodded at a bookcase in the corner of the main room. “You put far too much faith in my carpentry abilities. _That’s_ about the most I can manage.”

 

The house, like most of the other buildings in the settlement, had only the single story.

 

“There’s a cellar, too,” Chakotay told him. “There aren’t any weather nets on this planet and this continent gets hit by tornadoes every summer, so we make good use of it. Here’s where you’ll be.”

 

He’d led them to the back of the house, where there appeared to be a total of three bedrooms. Tom’s was at the end of the hall.

 

“Thanks,” Tom said, gratefully setting his bag down on the bed and rubbing his shoulder. Chakotay leaned against the doorframe and crossed his arms over his chest.

 

“So,” he said. “Are we going to talk about why you’re actually here?”

 

“Like I said, B’Elanna suggested it.”

 

“And why might she have done that?”

 

Tom shrugged casually. “With her? Who knows.”

 

Chakotay absorbed all this quietly, not taking his eyes off Tom.

 

“Your ride home comes by in - what, three weeks?” Chakotay asked finally, dropping the subject for now. “That’s how long it is normally between medical transports.”

 

Tom nodded.

 

“Well, we’ll make good use of you,” Chakotay said, nodding to himself decisively. “We can always use an extra pair of hands, even if it also means an extra mouth to feed. We’ve got a lot that needs to be done on this colony, so don’t think that you’re going to spend the next three weeks just sitting around.”

 

“Believe me, that’s the _last_ thing I want to do.”

 

Chakotay pushed himself off the doorframe. “Come on, then. I’ll show you around.”

 

Tom had guessed correctly when it came to the settlement’s central buildings. One of them indeed was a school, for the two-hundred-odd school-age children that lived on the planet. There was another building for surplus food, which was collected every harvest and stored for harsh winters or brutal summers. There was also a small library. And, according to Chakotay, the main road right through the center of the settlement was turned into an outdoors market nearly every day that the weather allowed it.

 

“Most of the colonists farm, but there are some who don’t, so it’s a good way to make sure everyone gets a variety of food,” Chakotay said. “And there are some who do woodworking or sew clothing. Sometimes items are sold for money, but for the most part we use a barter system.”

 

“Have you lived here since….?” Tom trailed off. Chakotay nodded.

 

“It was easier to arrange passage back then, what with the chaos following the war. They hadn’t tightened the borders yet,” Chakotay said. “I hadn’t been here since I left for the Academy. None of my fights with the Maquis were anywhere close to Dorvan, even though this is the only place I wanted to be. I planned to only stay for a few weeks, to see what help I could offer. And I just never quite managed to leave.”

 

“Why not?”

 

“Where would I have gone?” Chakotay countered. He shrugged. “This is my home.”

 

Tom found himself talking a little about what he’d been doing since their return - how he’d left Starfleet and taken his piloting job out on Rigel Prime.

 

“I wanted something that would keep me flying. Starfleet wanted to bench me,” he said, his words bitter even after all this time. “They wanted me behind a desk. Can you believe that?”

 

“Would you have stayed if they’d put you at a helm?” Chakotay asked, in a tone of voice that suggested he already knew the answer.

 

“No,” Tom admitted.

 

“How’d your father take that?”

 

“He stopped speaking to me,” Tom said, with finality in his tone that hopefully conveyed that he didn’t want to discuss the matter further.

 

They had reached a small rise. Tom paused, staring out beyond the colony at the late-afternoon sun, which weakened and turned blood-red as it sank. There were mountains on the horizon, and the sun was going to disappear behind them soon, throwing this valley into shadow.

“You ever talk to anyone else?” Tom asked finally.

 

Chakotay gave a slow shrug. “I hear from B’Elanna. Sometimes she sends messages from Kathryn or Tuvok. Seven writes occasionally as well.”

 

“B’Elanna says you don’t write back much.”

 

Chakotay was quiet for a while.

 

“It’s hard,” he said finally, “living on a planet that is slowly rejecting you. Our crop yields decrease every year. We can barely feed our people. We’re running out of drinking water, and our best scientific instruments can’t tell us when this drought might end. We have only the very basic of medical supplies. Starfleet can’t help us, and Cardassia won’t. So we have to make our own way, and we can barely do even that. I’m sorry, but writing letters ranks low on my list when I’m trying to keep my people alive.”

 

Chakotay heaved a slow sigh.

 

“And on top of that, I believe some of the environmental damage was caused by the Cardassians when they withdrew from this planet,” he said. “If not most of it. Dorvan has never been a very hospitable world, but at least it used to be able to sustain us. These changes are too drastic and too fast to be natural.”

 

“And it sounds like something the Cardassians would do,” Tom said. “Slash and burn.”

 

Chakotay nodded absently. He looked back over his shoulder at the settlement, and then checked the chronometer on his wrist. “Come on. I need to stop at the school before we head back to the house.”

 

School had been in session when they first passed the small schoolhouse, so the grounds surrounding it had been quiet. Now, however, children were out and about, walking home in groups or with parents who had come to pick them up. Small groups of them were sitting on the steps or standing under sparse trees. The air was filled with chatter and laughter.

 

Chakotay paused near the steps of the schoolhouse. Tom thought he was waiting for some children to move aside so that they could go in, but Chakotay didn’t move. He was staring off into the middle distance. Then, he raised his hand, catching someone’s gaze and motioning them over.

 

When the crowd in front of them parted, Tom saw that a young boy was approaching them. It was difficult to gauge his age, but Tom would say that he was perhaps twelve or thirteen. It wasn’t until he was almost in front of them that Tom realized he was Cardassian.

 

“Hey,” Chakotay said, giving the first genuine smile that Tom had seen on him yet. His entire demeanor brightened, the lines around his mouth and at the corners of his eyes softening while his eyes lit. It was such an abrupt transformation that Tom felt his breath catch in his throat. “How was school?”

 

“Fine,” the boy said, returning the smile and giving a small shrug. “I dunno. Same as usual. Hi.”

 

He gave Tom a quick wave, which Tom returned awkwardly.

 

“Peval, this is Tom Paris, the man I said would be staying with us,” Chakotay said. “Tom, this is Peval - my son.”

 

\----

 

The walk back to Chakotay’s house felt longer than it actually was. Tom trailed behind Chakotay and Peval, only half-listening to their conversation as they talked about Peval’s day. His head was spinning. He could see now that Peval was at least part-human. The markings along his neck and the indentation in his forehead were not as pronounced as Tom was used to seeing in Cardassians, and his skin was ashen rather than slate-gray. But that raised a whole host of questions - chief among them who Peval’s mother was, and where was she now?

 

When they were back at the house, Peval went straight to his bedroom at the back and Tom followed Chakotay into the kitchen.

 

“Drink?” Chakotay asked.

 

“What the hell, Chakotay?” Tom asked instead.

 

“Drink,” Chakotay said quietly to himself. He pulled out a bottle of ale and poured glasses for them both. He handed one to Tom. “And think for a moment. Peval’s twelve.”

 

“You’ve only been back in this quadrant for eight years,” Tom said, realization dawning. Of course - how could he have leapt to that conclusion so quickly?

 

Chakotay nodded. “When the Cardassians withdrew from this planet, they didn’t take everyone with them. There were roughly two dozen orphans who got left behind. Some of them are full Cardassians, who lost both parents at some point during the conflict and have no other surviving family. Others were the result of unions between the Cardassians and people of this tribe.”

 

Whether those unions were willing or not went unsaid. But Tom had heard this story before, from other worlds within the Federation. Bajor in particular had the highest number of Cardassian orphans.

 

“He was five when he came to stay with me,” Chakotay said. “I didn’t plan it, just like I didn’t plan on staying here, but…”

 

He trailed off as Peval came into the kitchen, and his face melted into that easy smile again. It took years off him. The marked contrast punched the air from Tom’s chest, and he took a long swallow of his drink to steady himself.

 

“So when’s dinner?” Peval asked, turning one of the kitchen chairs around and straddling it backwards in a way Tom had seen Chakotay do so many times in the Mess Hall on _Voyager_. Chakotay raised an eyebrow at the boy and twirled a finger in the air. Peval sighed and turned the chair around before sitting in it properly.

 

“Are you hungry _now_?” Chakotay asked in disbelief.

 

Peval nodded eagerly. Chakotay rolled his eyes, but a smile tugged at his lips.

 

“All right. Come on, you can give me a hand.”

 

Tom was put to work, too. He sliced vegetables while Peval handled the soup and Chakotay - to his great surprise - prepared some beef to go along with the meal.

 

“Not for me,” Chakotay said to his questioning glance when Peval left the room for a moment. “Cardassians require meat as part of their diet. They simply can’t choose to be vegetarians - it would eventually kill them. We found that out the hard way with the children who had been left behind. Peval in particular was a sickly child before we figured out the cause for it.”

 

“Quite the learning curve,” Tom commented, and Chakotay nodded.

 

“You have no idea,” he said. And then there was that smile again. “But I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”

 

They ate dinner outside, sitting cross-legged on blankets behind the house. Now that the sun had set, the temperature had cooled considerably. It was a temperate night. Tom was content to simply watch Peval and Chakotay interact, marveling at the ease with which Chakotay slipped into his fatherly role. Tom had always known that Chakotay wanted children someday, but he had never been able to quite picture it. Having a child would have been difficult for a Maquis cell leader and near-impossible for a first officer on a starship stranded on the far side of the galaxy. Tom had assumed that was one dream Chakotay had finally simply set aside. And maybe he had - at least, until Peval came along.

 

Peval’s Cardassian features were highlighted in the light from the lanterns they had brought outside with them, but so too were his human ones. His hair, for one, was brunet rather than stark-black, and he wore it shaggy. He was constantly brushing it out of his eyes. He also seemed to speak the language of Chakotay’s people, and sometimes would switch between that and Standard in the middle of a sentence. Tom wondered if he knew Kardasi; if he knew of the nature of his conception, or if Chakotay had managed to shield him from that thus far.

 

“ - were the best pilot he’s ever seen.”

 

Tom realized suddenly that Peval was talking to him. “Sorry, what?”

 

“Dad says you were the best pilot he’s ever seen,” Peval repeated. “What was it like, piloting _Voyager_?”

 

“ _Were_?” Tom asked, raising an eyebrow at Chakotay, who shrugged.

 

“It’s been eight years since I’ve seen you fly. Who knows, you might have started slipping.”

 

“I’m still the best pilot in this quadrant,” Tom said to Peval, warmth flooding his chest unexpectedly when he realized that Chakotay was _teasing_ him. “ _And_ in the Delta. Piloting _Voyager_ was a dream. The bio-neural circuitry meant that she responded to commands as though she was alive. I don’t think I’ll ever fly anything like her again.”

 

Tom regaled Peval with a couple of stories from _Voyager_ , until Chakotay finally put a stop to him _filling the boy’s head with nonsense_ and sent Peval off to do his homework.

 

“You’re just envious that now _I’m_ the cool one,” Tom said as he helped Chakotay clean up the dishes, and Chakotay snorted.

 

Tom didn’t realize until then how exhausted he was. He thought back, and realized that he’d been up for almost two days straight at this point. He had only napped sporadically on the shuttle ride to Dorvan, and from there the adrenaline had buoyed him throughout the day. But now the night was quiet, the shock of Peval had worn off, and his belly was full of food.

 

“You’re dead on your feet,” Chakotay said, just as Tom was thinking the same thing. “Go to bed.”

 

“Going to bed before nine o’clock is probably the most pathetic thing I’ve done since the Academy,” Tom countered, and Chakotay rolled his eyes.

 

“I’m getting you up at dawn tomorrow, so you might as well sleep while you can.”

 

Dawn? Jesus Christ, he hadn’t been kidding when he said that this wasn’t going to be a vacation.

 

“You’re a real hard-ass, Chakotay,” Tom said, stifling a yawn with the back of his hand.

 

“Just think of it like being back on _Voyager_ again,” Chakotay said.

 

But he didn’t want this to be like _Voyager_ all over again, Tom thought unhappily as he crawled into bed. Seven years of a tenuous and brittle friendship, because Chakotay couldn’t forgive what he saw as a betrayal and Tom couldn’t articulate why it wasn’t one.

 

No longer held at bay by the distractions of the day, a treacherous voice in the back of his mind whispered, _And that’s because you’re still in love with him_.

 

Tom groaned and rolled over, shoving his head under his pillows.

 

Fuck.


	2. Chapter 2

They were all up the next morning with the dawn. Showers were fast, to conserve water - which was just fine by Tom, because the water was _cold_.

 

“Woke you up, though, didn’t it?” Chakotay pointed out, far too cheerfully for Tom’s tastes, and he merely grunted in response.

 

Peval left for school after breakfast. Chakotay and Tom left not long after he did, but they headed toward the other side of the settlement. Twenty minutes later, they were looking out onto the vast fields that fed the colony - the precious farmlands that were producing fewer and fewer crops every year.

 

Once, when Tom had been no more than fourteen, his father had taken him on a trip to the arid inner lands of the North American continent. They had hiked and camped for eight days, roughing it the way their ancestors would have done hundreds of years before. Owen Paris had seen it as a way to test Tom’s mettle, to see if he could endure harsh conditions the way the son of a Starfleet admiral should.

 

But what Tom had taken away from the trip was that the desert was a land of extreme contrasts - between sun and shadow; between hot days and cold nights. Between fauna, even - the stark and barren landscape that was home only to the hardiest of plants could transform into a spectacular display of colors after rain. What would his father say, Tom mused as he stood beside Chakotay, if he was here now? Would he scoff at this, at his failure of a child trying his hand at farming in the _desert,_ of all places? _Just what are you thinking, boy, when you can’t even -_

 

Tom shook his head. That trip was years ago, over thirty of them now, and Owen Paris had no right haunting him now when he was so far removed from that miserable week, both in space and in time.

 

“We don’t have a lot of the large farm equipment that would be used on Earth,” Chakotay was saying. “Most of our farming needs to be done by hand. And it’s planting season.”

 

Tom suppressed a groan. Of course it would be planting season. He sure knew how to pick his vacations, didn’t he?

 

But this is what he had wanted, and complaints aside, it was exactly what he _needed_. Hours passed in a flash out in the hot fields, and it was high noon when Tom next thought to check his chronometer. Planting was a delicate process, and it required his full attention even though it was also repetitive. He hadn’t had much time to allow his mind to wander and settle on unpleasant subjects.

 

Beside him, Chakotay straightened and swiped the back of his hand across his forehead. They had both shed their shirts under the glare of the hot sun, and Tom hadn’t fully appreciated this until now. Chakotay’s dark skin glistened with sweat, and his biceps rippled as he moved. The smattering of hair across his chest was still black, untouched by age. Tom had a sudden, sharp memory of the aftermath of sex; of resting his head on that bare chest and pushing his hand through the tightly-coiled and damp hairs until Chakotay, huffing out a breathless laugh, twined their fingers together.

 

Deep longing stabbed him in the stomach, and he swallowed and forced his eyes away. Chakotay, if he noticed the stare, gave no indication of it.

 

“Lunch?” he asked, and Tom nodded wordlessly.

 

That afternoon passed in much the same way as the morning had. There were others in the fields as well, and as they worked Chakotay introduced Tom to at least twenty people whose names Tom would never remember. They were all welcoming and seemed pleased to see him helping out. And they all seemed to defer to Chakotay. Tom had no idea how the government in this settlement was set up, if indeed there was a formal government at all. But all the settlers they came across seemed to treat Chakotay like a leader, asking for his input on certain matters or seeking his opinion on others, and Tom couldn’t help but wonder about it.

 

“No,” Chakotay said later as they trekked toward the schoolhouse, their work done for the day. “I mean, yes, we have a ruling council here, but I have no part in it.”

 

“Seems like you do,” Tom said.

 

Chakotay pursed his lips. He didn’t appear too happy at the observation. “I know. That was never my intention. I’m the only one of the tribe who has lived off-world, who went into Starfleet. They seem to think I have expertise in different matters because of it. But I don’t want to be treated differently, or held up on some kind of… pedestal.”

 

He was quiet for a moment, and then added, “I just want to live in peace with my boy. And help out my people in any way I can. That’s it.”

 

Peval met them in front of the schoolhouse again, and they all walked home together. Tom didn’t realize until they got inside the house how sore he was, and not all of it was due to his muscles.

 

“There’s aloe in the bathroom,” Chakotay said, wincing in sympathy as Tom peeled off his shirt to reveal a deep sunburn. “We actually might need to use a dermal regenerator on that, Tom. Looks pretty nasty.”

 

“Feels worse than it looks, too,” Tom groaned. He tried to roll his shoulders. “Dear _God_ , that fuckin’ hurts.”

 

“Language,” Chakotay said, shooting him a scolding look.

 

Peval made a show of plugging his ears. “Didn’t hear a thing!”

 

Chakotay used a dermal regenerator to take care of the worst of the sunburn, then left Tom some aloe. Tom showered - this time, the cold water was a relief - and lathered the lotion onto his skin. Then, exhausted from a day spent in the sun, he lay on top of his blankets and swiftly fell asleep.

 

It was after dinner when he woke from his nap. Peval was in his bedroom with the door closed, and Chakotay was sitting out on the small deck behind the house. Tom shrugged into a t-shirt and padded outside. He was no longer in pain, though his muscles still held the memory of the ache and his skin felt tight.

 

“Sorry about that,” Tom said as he joined Chakotay on the porch. “I honestly didn’t mean to fall asleep.”

 

“Working out in the sun is exhausting,” Chakotay pointed out. “And you’re not used to it. It’s to be expected. We already had dinner, but I saved you some. It’s in the cooling unit for when you want it.”

 

“Thanks. Maybe later. Think the sun took my appetite, too.” Tom rubbed the back of his neck with both hands, working out a knot of tight muscles there. “So we never finished that conversation.”

 

“Which one?”

 

“About Peval. How he came to stay with you, but you hadn’t planned on it.”

 

“Ah.” Chakotay was quiet for a moment. “When I first came back to Dorvan, that schoolhouse wasn’t a school - it was an orphanage. My people didn’t really know what to do with Cardassian or half-Cardassian children… especially when many of them had resulted from rape. It was as though we had forgotten our history, had forgotten that some of our ancestors were products of such unions and they were still raised as children of the tribe. So I started helping out at the orphanage when I could - making meals, bringing medical supplies, teaching the children our history, that kind of thing. And there was this sweet little boy who just always wanted to be around me. I don’t know why. But he’d help me in the kitchen or sit in my lap when we were all reading together and I just - I don’t know. He _liked_ me.

 

“But he was sick a lot, even after we figured out the whole meat thing, and that first winter he got so bad that I didn’t want to leave him there on his own. It would be easier for me to look after him if he was in my house. So I brought him home and sat with him for two weeks, nursing him back to health. And after that, he just… stayed.”

 

“Do the Cardassians know there were children left behind on this planet?” Tom asked quietly.

 

“I don’t know,” Chakotay said, his tone swiftly becoming somber. “No one’s been back since the end of the Dominion War. If the children have distant relatives living on Cardassia, we don’t know about it. I assume it’s highly likely, though.”

 

“Do you think they’ll find out?”

 

“It’s my biggest fear,” Chakotay admitted. “And I assume we’ll have to confront it someday. We aren’t going to stay forgotten forever. Especially once the recovery effort ends and Cardassia Prime starts to focus on its worlds rather than on itself. I don't know what we'll do when it happens, but we'll come up with something. These are our children.”

 

Tom stretched out on the deck, resting his head on one arm and tilting his face to the sky. There were no buildings to obstruct his view; no trees or foliage. It was just an empty, endless basin filled with glittering stars. If not for Chakotay’s silhouetted form visible in his periphery, Tom would have felt like he was falling into the black. “Is this where you grew up?”

 

“No,” Chakotay said after a beat, as though he needed to consider his answer. He pointed off to Tom’s right. “The original settlement was about a hundred kilometers that way, beyond the mountains. The Cardassians resettled us here and took over the existing buildings after the treaty was signed. We’ve considered moving back, but it wouldn’t be worth the effort. The land over there is no better than what we have here.”

 

Silence for a while. Tom listened to the barking of dogs somewhere else in the settlement; the wind as it whispered across the land and stirred the dirt.

 

“It’s never this quiet on Rigel,” he said. “There’s always something going on.”

 

“Driving you crazy, Flyboy?”

 

The use of the ancient nickname, the one that predated Auckland, stole the breath from Tom’s chest.

 

“No,” he said softly, and hoped that it didn’t sound strangled. “I like it. I could get used to it.”

 

Chakotay was quiet for a moment. “I never would have guessed you would be one who liked silence and peace.”

 

“There are a lot of things that you’ve assumed about me over the years,” Tom said, suddenly biting and bitter. “Add it to the list.”

 

Chakotay turned to look at him. Tom pushed himself into a sitting position, though he stared out into the darkened valley and refused to meet Chakotay’s gaze.

 

“Was I wrong when I assumed that you would be trouble from the moment we met? When I assumed that you were only in the Maquis fight because you needed someone to pay your bar tabs? When I saw you on _Voyager_ ’s bridge and assumed that it was because someone offered you a better deal and you took it? When I assumed that you were only ever going to look out for yourself, and you’d sell your dignity and your services to the highest bidder, no matter the cause they espoused?”

 

Chakotay didn’t raise his voice from a low, dangerous monotone. The words poured out of him as though he'd been storing them for an age. Tom’s jaw locked in fury, and he could feel a vein start to pulse in his head. Worse still was the pricking at his eyes, and the realization that even after seventeen _years_ Chakotay still didn’t know a thing about him.

 

“I was in that fight for the same damn reason you were,” Tom snarled when he could find his voice. “Because of my father. Because my childhood was unbearable, and I was as much a failure as a Starfleet cadet as I was as his son, so I ran. I went looking for a fight and for refuge, and I found both with the Maquis. I took Janeway’s offer because I was in _prison_ , and even at thirty I was still looking for my father’s approval. And you’re damn right I was trying to look out for myself! Because I never had anyone to do it for me. So fuck you, Chakotay, and that high horse you’re always riding.”

 

Tom shoved himself to his feet and made for the door, but he paused just short of stepping inside.

 

“He’s dead now,” he said abruptly to Chakotay’s back. _“Admiral Paris_. Not as invincible as he liked to believe, especially when it came to his ol’ heart. Died a few months back. And you know what? I thought I’d feel relieved. The one monster in my life is finally gone. And I feel _worse_.”

 

He was tempted, for one wild moment, to pack all of his things and take the medical shuttle out of there. Just hop on and _run_ , no matter that his ride back to Federation space wouldn’t be appearing for another three weeks. But better sense prevailed, and Tom got as far as sinking down onto his bed and putting his head in his hands.

 

Twenty minutes passed before there was a soft but insistent rapping on his door. When Tom said nothing, the handle turned and the door opened anyway. Chakotay closed it behind him and padded across the room.

 

“I’m sorry,” he said as he sat down on the bed. Tom raised his head to look at him; the Chakotay he knew was quick to anger and slow to admit when he was wrong. “I didn’t know about your father.”

 

“You couldn’t be expected to,” Tom said, bitterness sweeping over him once again. Of course - it was a consolation, not an apology.

 

“I should have at least considered it. I just assumed you were a spoiled little shit,” Chakotay said bitterly. “You came from Starfleet royalty. I never considered that your childhood was anything less than ideal.”

 

Tom looked at him. An apology after all, then.

 

“Yeah, well,” he said finally. “You’re not the only one who thought that. And you’re right about one thing - no matter which way you look at it, I _did_ betray you. I was going to help Janeway find you in the Badlands.”

 

“The ghosts of our fathers are powerful things,” Chakotay said quietly. “Even if they’re still alive. The hope of what might be - what _could_ be - is potent. And when they die, when they take away any chance of acceptance, any hope of a deathbed apology… of course you feel worse. Now you _know_ you’ll never hear him say those words. Before… there was at least a chance of him coming around, no matter how slim.”

 

Tom gave a choked laugh. “What, are you a therapist now, too?”

 

Chakotay rubbed a thumb over the back of his hand.

 

“I joined the Maquis because of my father’s death. Because I thought it might make things right somehow. Balance out the universe or something like that. I’d abandoned him as a teenager, and he died without me trying to defend his home. Later, I tried to justify it. Said that I was fighting for my home and my people, but it was really all about him.”

 

Tom rubbed a hand across his face, the weight of seventeen years settling on his shoulders. Seventeen years of facades and masks, and barriers neither of them could - would - breach.

 

“This was always our problem, you know,” he said finally. Even to his own ears, his voice sounded hoarse. “We couldn’t ever just be fucking _honest_ with each other.”

 

“Is that all it was?” Chakotay asked with a disbelieving huff. But he was quiet for a moment, considering this, and then he finally said, “I wanted to hate you, you know. For so many reasons - some real, most imagined or hypocritical. I tried so hard to despise you, and I just _couldn’t_.”

 

“Could’ve fooled me,” Tom muttered, dropping his gaze to his folded hands.

 

“But I couldn’t fool myself,” Chakotay said softly. “I tried to hate you, Tom, and I fell for you instead.”

 

Tom’s head snapped up. “ _What_?”

 

In the dim light of the room, Chakotay’s eyes looked black. His gaze was fixed unnervingly on Tom’s face. “I treated you badly for no reason other than the fact that I couldn’t handle what I was feeling, and I’m sorry.”

 

“You’re sorry,” Tom repeated dumbly. Chakotay got to his feet. Tom grabbed his arm and pulled him down again. “What do you fucking mean, _you’re sorry_?”

 

“Tom -”

 

“Shut up,” Tom snarled, grabbing Chakotay by the front of his shirt and sealing their mouths together.

 

Chakotay went rigid, his mouth unmoving against the press of Tom’s lips. Tom lingered for a moment more, long enough to make his point, and then drew back.

 

“You let me into your life, into your _bed_ , tell me years later that you’re in love with me, and all you can say is _sorry_?” he hissed. “You’re just going to walk away now, like you have all the other times before, instead of fucking _facing_ this?”

 

“Tom, I can’t -”

 

“The hell you can’t!” Tom snapped. “You think I’m going to let you off that easily? That you can just dump all of that on me and then walk away? Think again, asshole, because _I’m fucking in love with you, too_!”

 

They sat there for a moment, breathing hard, Chakotay’s shirt still clenched in Tom’s white-knuckled grip. Slowly, Chakotay brought his hands up and covered Tom’s.

 

“I shouldn’t have said that,” he said quietly. With glacial slowness, Tom uncurled his fingers and allowed Chakotay to pull his hands away. But he didn’t release Tom.

 

“Don’t take it back,” Tom whispered. “For fuck’s sake, Chakotay, don’t you _dare_ take it back.”

 

Not after all this time, he silently begged. Seventeen years - wasn’t that long enough?

 

“I wouldn’t do that,” Chakotay said. He sighed. “You’re right. It’s out now. I should face that, instead of running away.”

 

“You make it sound like a damned chore,” Tom spat.

 

“Tom, I don’t know what you want from me. I can’t undo the past seventeen years, and I can’t ignore the fact that in less than three weeks you’re going to have to leave this place. If not forever, then at least for a very long time.” Chakotay gave another heavy sigh. “I shouldn’t have said something that we can now do nothing about.”

 

“Oh, for fuck’s sake. Just shut up and kiss me.”

 

And he did. Pushed Tom down on the bed and crawled on top of him in one fluid movement, capturing his lips in a heated kiss. The change was so abrupt that Tom couldn’t help the yelp that slipped past his lips. In the space of a second, the whipcord of Chakotay’s self-control had snapped, and he was kissing Tom as though it was the only way he could breathe.

 

When Tom returned home on term breaks during his time at the Academy, he’d had the oddest sensation of both returning to a place he felt like he’d never left and stepping foot into a town he’d never seen before. Kissing Chakotay now brought back that feeling in a rush - Tom _knew_ this mouth and this body, knew how to make him sigh and moan, and at the same time found his fingers running over unfamiliar hard muscle and new scars that _didn’t belong_. He was at once coming home and seeing something for the very first time. It was dizzying.

 

They kissed for what felt like hours, tangled together on the narrow bed, until Tom was out of breath and out of energy, and his lips were numb. He’d shed his shirt, and Chakotay was running light fingers over his chest. They were both aroused and ignoring it. Tom closed his eyes and tried to mentally beat back his erection, but it was difficult with Chakotay’s sharp scent so near and his warm fingers on Tom’s chest.

 

Chakotay pressed a kiss to the underside of his jaw. “I should go.”

 

“Yeah,” Tom said, more in acknowledgement than in agreement. Chakotay’s fingers found his; Tom held on fast. “In the morning… don’t ask me to forget this.”

 

“I won’t,” Chakotay promised. “Even if I wanted to - hell, Tom, I’m not that strong.”

 

\----

 

The next few days passed much like the first. The three of them would get up with the sun and prepare for the day, and then Peval would go to school while Tom and Chakotay would put in time on the various farms around the settlement. After three days of what felt like unending exhaustion, Tom’s body started to get used to the exertion, and he found that in the evenings he actually could do more than just eat and immediately go to bed.

 

Which was a good thing, because the evenings were when Chakotay would come to his room and they would fumble in the dark like teenagers.

 

True to his word, he hadn’t asked Tom to forget that first night, or his confession. They were discreet in their encounters, but then Tom expected that. No use making it known all over the colony or to Peval that they were starting something new - or rather, picking up where they left off so many years ago. It was all going to be over in a few weeks anyway. So Tom pressed his face into the pillows to stifle his cries or swallowed Chakotay’s moans with heated kisses, and Chakotay always left for his own bed before morning.

 

“Was there ever anyone once you returned home?” Tom asked one night. Chakotay’s head was pillowed on his shoulder, and he was stroking his fingers idly through the sweat-damp hair.

 

“Not really,” Chakotay said, but there had been a moment’s hesitation.

 

“Really?” Tom asked. “Eight years, and there was _no one_? How did you not have people banging down your door? You do realize that you were the most eligible man on _Voyager_.”

 

“And the most inaccessible, considering the fact that I couldn’t start anything with one of my subordinates,” Chakotay said, flicking Tom’s ear. “And there wasn’t _no one_. Just nothing that ever lasted. It’s hard when you’re a single parent. And - truth be told, I wasn’t all that interested.”

 

They dozed lightly for a while, until finally Chakotay roused himself, pressed a kiss to the shell of Tom’s ear, and left for his own bed.

 

In the morning, when Chakotay was in the shower, Peval sat down across from Tom at the breakfast table and asked, “Can I go for a ride in the shuttle with you?”

 

Tom blinked at him. “My transport?”

 

“Yeah.” Peval shoveled a fork full of eggs into his mouth. “I’ve never been in one before. We don’t have shuttles here anymore.”

 

“Well, we’d have to ask your dad,” Tom said, giving Peval a tentative smile. “But I don’t have a problem with it. You interested in flying?”

 

“Yeah,” Peval said eagerly, nodding quickly. “I think it’d be cool. I wanna be a pilot.”

 

“Says the child who lives on a planet without any aircraft,” Chakotay said dryly as he came into the kitchen. He ruffled Peval’s hair as he passed behind him. Peval sighed.

 

“I’m not gonna live here _forever,_ Dad.”

 

There was a sudden flash of something across Chakotay’s face - sadness, perhaps, or regret, or a mix of the two. Probably he was thinking about his father, and about how he’d once said those very same words to Kolopak.

 

Tom pushed his chair back from the table and stood.

 

“Come on, you’re going for a shuttle ride,” he said, striding from the kitchen. Peval hurried after him. And then, after a moment’s hesitation, Chakotay followed.

 

“Are we seriously going up in the shuttle?” Peval asked eagerly.

 

“We are _seriously_ going up in the shuttle,” Tom said. “Know anything about flying, kid?”

 

“I’ve read some books,” Peval said.

 

“Good enough,” Tom said. They approached the shuttle, and Tom keyed in the code that would let them inside. “You can be my co-pilot today. Here, have a seat there. Chakotay can be your backup.”

 

Tom unlocked the main console as he sat down. There were three seats at this console in the cockpit. Peval sat in the middle, with Tom to his right. Chakotay sat on the boy’s other side. He brushed his hand across the console and watched it light up at his touch. There was an odd mix of wonder and nostalgia on his face.

 

“They’ve made quite a few updates over the years,” Chakotay said, examining the new controls. “This a new shuttle?”

 

“It’s about two years off the line,” Tom said. “Wanna take off for me?”

 

“Initiating thrusters,” Chakotay said, and Peval gave a soft, “ _Whoa,_ ” as the shuttle rumbled to life and lifted into the air.

 

“You can _fly_?” Peval demanded as they sailed over the settlement, looking accusingly at Chakotay.

 

“Hey, being first officer doesn’t mean I just did paperwork all day,” Chakotay protested, putting on a look of mock indignation.

 

“Your dad’s a great pilot. He taught the Advanced Tactical Training class at the Academy before he resigned. And he had this signature move when we were in the Maquis together,” Tom said. “If we were fighting multiple ships, he’d fly right at one of the enemy ships - I mean _literally_ right at it, thrusters on full - and at the very last moment he’d pull up and hug the hull, flying far too close for the ship to get a weapons lock on him. And the trick came in because the other ships would be firing on us, trying to destroy us - thinking that we were about to deliberately crash into the one ship. But your dad would pull up at a strategic spot, and the weapons fire would hit the enemy ship instead, not us - crippling them. He could only pull it off because the ship we had was so maneuverable, but it was a hell of a thing. I nearly shit myself the first time he did it.”

 

Peval stared at Chakotay, wide-eyed. “You really did that, Dad?”

 

“I had a few tricks up my sleeve, but that’s really all they were. Just tricks," Chakotay said. “Every pilot has his own flavor to flying. I always came in hard and fast. Pilots like Tom have patience, and they’re calculating. They can predict outcomes far, far down the line. They can see a battle and map out every scenario. I’m more short-sighted.”

 

“Your dad got us out of more than a few tight spots on _Voyager_ ,” Tom said. “Don’t let him sell himself short.”

 

Tom flew them over the mountains, dipping down into the valley on the other side and then shooting off toward the horizon. He narrated it all to Peval, who sat in fascination. The speeds they reached in the shuttle would have been unlike anything else Peval had experienced in his life, and his eyes bugged out of his head when Tom pulled up a map on one of the computer screens to show how far they’d gone. They were halfway around the equator in an hour, looking out on landscapes Peval had never laid eyes on before, let alone visited.

 

“You want to give it a whirl?” Tom asked after he’d taken them above the atmosphere and into a low orbit around the planet. He took his hands off the controls. The shuttle remained steady, caught in the planet’s orbit. “See? Nothing you can do up here will harm us.”

 

Peval looked at Chakotay, who nodded.

 

“Show me,” Peval said, almost breathless with excitement, and Tom laughed.

 

They spent a good hour in orbit around Dorvan while Tom showed Peval different maneuvers with the shuttle. He could increase or decrease their speed, change their course, and plot a trajectory by the end of it. The kid was a natural, Tom thought wistfully. If only he lived somewhere he could put his skills to good use.

 

Tom took them through the final landing sequence, though he did let Peval be the one to cut the engines once they were back on solid ground.

 

“That was the _coolest_ ,” Peval gushed as they all disembarked. “Dad, can we go again tomorrow?”

 

“How about sometime next week?” Chakotay asked. He slung an arm around Peval’s shoulders, drawing him close and ruffling his hair. Peval squirmed away, laughing.

 

Later that night, with Chakotay pressed up against his side, Tom said, “He doesn’t know much about your past.”

 

“There’s only so much of it I can tell to a twelve-year-old,” Chakotay murmured, half-asleep. Tom felt a stab of regret. Stupid, _stupid_. Opening his mouth before he stopped to think about it. Obviously, some things would never change.

 

“I wasn’t thinking earlier,” Tom said quietly. “When I was talking about us and the Maquis. Does Peval even know about any of that?”

 

Chakotay nodded slowly. “He does.”

 

It was a loaded two words. “And?”

 

“And… he understands, I guess, as much as you can at that age. He doesn’t know I’ve killed people, because I never explicitly said that. I’m sure he’ll figure it out later, when he can properly grasp the nuances of those years.” Chakotay paused, tucking a bit of sweat-damp hair behind Tom’s ear. “He struggles with it sometimes, the fact that I was fighting _his_ people, only they aren’t really _his_ people, because he was abandoned by them just like the rest of us. The only thing he shares with the Cardassians is a genetic heritage. Everything else… he’s one of _us_. I think that’s sometimes hard for him to wrap his head around - especially when there are a few people in this settlement who _do_ see the Cardassian children as something _other_. I don’t know, Tom. There’s no guidebook for this. I just have to take each day as it comes, and hope he’ll come to me when he needs to talk.”

 

Tom twisted around in Chakotay’s arms to look at him. “You’ve got a pretty damn well-adjusted kid on your hands, Chief, for all that he’s been through. I think you’re doing fine.”

 

Something flickered in Chakotay’s eyes, a warmth that might have been - but Tom forced his eyes away before he could label it, before he lost himself in the depths of that emotion. He closed his eyes and rolled over again. Three weeks - that’s all this was. Three weeks of starting to mend fences, and then it would be over. There was no use hoping for more.

 


	3. Chapter 3

 

Peval had the next day off school, so Chakotay let him sleep in instead of rousing him first thing in the morning.

 

Tom was not so lucky.

 

“I’m really starting to hate your fucking face,” Tom muttered when Chakotay shook his shoulder to wake him. He rolled over and shoved his head under a pillow. Chakotay was already showered and dressed, looking far too awake for this hour of the morning. He laughed.

 

“We’re leaving in thirty minutes, Paris,” he said as he left the room once more, and Tom groaned.

 

Today, however, they quit early in the fields. Shortly after lunch, Chakotay had them putting away their things and was saying goodbye to their fellow workers.

 

“Thought you might like to see something,” Chakotay said as they walked to the center of town. He mounted the steps of a slate-gray building that was roughly the size of two houses put together and entered a code in the keypad next to the door. Tom followed him inside.

 

He found himself in a lab that wouldn’t have looked out of place on Rigel, or on any of the ships he had been on over the years. Banks of computers lined the walls, sleek and modern. All of the displays were up, and there was a gentle hum in the room that he had come to associate with any of the labs on _Voyager_.

 

“Back when the borders were more open than they are now, my people had contact with others in the Federation. Sometimes they would receive clandestine shuttles full of supplies - not only food and clothing, but technology as well. They created this room using that technology.” Chakotay paused and ran a hand over one of the computer consoles. It lit up at his touch. “We don’t often use computers or automatons in our daily lives, but we recognize the importance of having such technology. Especially when we are so dependent on this planet for our survival.”

 

“So this is how you’ve been able to predict the changing climate,” Tom realized. Chakotay nodded.

 

“This is how we’ve been tracking the changes to the planet,” Chakotay said. He pulled up a map of Dorvan on one of the computer screens. The planet rotated slowly. Right now, it was showing the various weather systems around the planet. There was only one patch of rain, and it was light. The rest were just cloud systems. “It’s not very sophisticated, but we do what we can with it. We’ve been able to map all the changes in the last five years. The drought is worsening and our farmlands are shrinking. Dust storms are increasing. Even the composition of our water is changing, and we think that has something to do with whatever the Cardassians did to the planet as they left it.”

 

“I thought the water tasted odd,” Tom commented.

 

Chakotay nodded and pulled up a chart on the screen. “Even over the past few weeks, it’s changed quite a bit. It’s not toxic, of course, but it is something we’ll have to keep an eye on.”

 

“Tampering with my lab again, are we, brother?”

 

They both turned around. A woman stood in the open doorway. Her dark hair was pulled back in a low ponytail and she was wearing a vibrantly colored shirt, brown trousers, and open-toed shoes. A young girl no higher than her knees clung to her hand. The woman was regarding Chakotay with an amused smile on her face, and he went over to greet her.

 

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” he said, kissing her cheek. She barely came up to his shoulder, so he had to bend at the waist. She pulled him into a hug. “Tom, this is my sister, Chaya.”

 

“Sister?” Tom repeated despite himself.

 

Chakotay pulled out of the woman’s embrace. He turned to the little girl and gave her a brilliant smile. “And _this_ is Hanna.”

 

He picked Hanna up and tossed her into the air. She giggled in delight.

 

Tom thought he recalled now Chakotay mentioning at some point on _Voyager_ that he’d had a sister - that’s right, it was shortly after they had started receiving letters from the Alpha Quadrant. Tom had been too wrapped up in the anxiety of finally having contact again with the one place in the universe he never wanted to return to, and he hadn’t paid much attention to everyone else’s joy.

  
“It’s so nice to finally meet you,” Chaya said, offering Tom her hand. “My brother never shuts up about you.”

 

Chakotay shot her a warning look, which she ignored.

 

“Where’s my favorite nephew?” Chaya demanded of Chakotay once he’d settled his niece on his hip.

 

“Asleep, probably until noon. He doesn’t have school today,” Chakotay said.

 

“I’m surprised you let him get away with that,” Chaya said. She looked at Tom. “Usually he’s got poor Peval up at the crack of dawn, giving him lessons in anthropology and archaeology and orbital mechanics.”

 

“Yeah, I know the feeling,” Tom muttered good-naturedly. “I don’t think I've slept past dawn once since I've been here.”

 

“It’s good for you,” Chakotay said briskly. “Besides, we’ve been needing another strong hand in the fields. Planting’s difficult work, and we’re on a timetable. You’ve been an asset.”

 

“That’s his way of saying thank you,” Chaya said. Chakotay ignored her in favor of tickling Hanna’s belly and making her laugh.

 

“So, this is your lab?” Tom asked.

 

“It’s everyone’s lab. It belongs to the colony,” Chaya said. “But I’ve been maintaining it and very few actually care to come in here, so I suppose it has become _mine_ , in a way.”

 

“Chaya taught herself how to use the equipment and computers,” Chakotay said, pride evident in his voice. “She’s the one who advises the ruling council on matters relating to crops, the climate, the weather, and the like.”

 

“It’s been nice having Chakotay home, though,” Chaya said. “He has more experience with this equipment than I do - especially when it comes to repairing things as they break. This is nowhere near as sophisticated as the labs you were used to on _Voyager_ , but it gets the job done for us.”

 

“Wanna go down,” Hanna declared suddenly. Chakotay laughed and set her on the floor. She immediately ran off into the other room, and he went after her.

 

“So how are you liking your visit so far?” Chaya asked. “Are you enjoying yourself in what little free time Chakotay is probably giving you?”

 

Tom had a sudden vision of just what they had been getting up to in said free time and fought to keep the flush off his cheekbones.

 

“It’s a beautiful planet,” he said. “Very peaceful. And it’s been… nice catching up with Chakotay. We don’t often hear from him.”

 

Chaya nodded. “He’s been occupied with matters of the colony. And with Peval, of course. Did he ever tell you how Peval came to live with him?”

  
Tom nodded. “He was one of the orphans left behind when the Cardassians left, and Chakotay took a shine to him.”

 

“That’s not all he did,” Chaya said. “We had a town hall meeting not long after Peval came to live with him. Chakotay stood up in front of practically the whole settlement and called us a bunch of cowards. Said that we had forgotten our history, forgotten what our ancestors had done before when there were children without homes. He said that we needed to shut the orphanage down and turn it into a school instead. That as long as there are people living on this colony, there would be no orphans. Every child here is a child of the tribe, a child of _ours_ , and they shouldn’t be without a home.” Chaya gave a soft huff. “And nearly everyone _agreed._ It was unbelievable. The rest of the children were adopted swiftly, and we started up a school. Found teachers, created a curriculum. It’s just astounding. _He_ is astounding. And he’s brought us through so many hardships.”

 

“We’d have helped if we knew he needed it,” Tom said. “None of us even knew he was living here, and we had no idea about the state that the Cardassians left some of their worlds in.”

 

“My brother is a prideful man,” Chaya said with a sigh. “And bull-headed, too.”

 

“That’s putting it lightly,” Tom said dryly.

 

Chaya gave him a gentle smile. “Don’t be too hard on him. He feels like he has the entire weight of the colony riding on his shoulders, and I’m not sure that he’s wrong. He’s the only one in recent memory to leave the tribe and return, and he’s brought with him a wealth of information - and stories of high adventure. To the children, he’s a legend. To many of the adults, too. He’s not an official leader, but nothing ever gets done without his approval. People come to him for advice on all sorts of matters. It wears on him. He’s terrified that someday he’ll make the wrong call and they will listen to him blindly, and it will mean our destruction.”

 

Chaya sighed, her eyes turning somber. “The planet is doing that well enough on its own without us contributing to it.”

 

“He did mention to me that he just wants to live in peace,” Tom said quietly. Chaya nodded.

 

“Yes. And he’ll need to seek that elsewhere.” And she shot him a look that was so pointed, Tom resisted the urge to take a step back.

 

“We’re just friends, Chaya,” he said, though the word felt wrong on his tongue. Chaya gave him another gentle smile.

 

“I’ve known him since the day he was born,” she said quietly. “And Tom, I’ve never heard him talk about _anyone_ the way he does about you. He’s not a man of many words, and he reserves a number of them for you.”

 

Chakotay returned with Hanna at that moment. He gave Chaya an apologetic smile. “Sorry. She wanted to see some of the simulations you have running in the other room, so I let her watch for a bit.”

 

“That’s fine. We should be going, though,” Chaya said. “I just wanted to check on the equipment. But it’s almost Hanna’s naptime. Can you say goodbye, sweetie?”

 

Hanna waved at them both, and then followed her mother out of the building.

 

“So you’re an uncle,” Tom said as they walked back to the house. 

 

“Well, yes, that’s generally what happens when your sibling has a child,” Chakotay said, twisting around and giving him a teasing smile as he keyed in the code for his door.

 

Tom rolled his eyes. “I meant, it’s just interesting, that’s all. How life had a tendency to go on without us. Does she have other children?”

 

Chakotay shook his head, his expression shuttering.

 

“No. Chaya’s husband died not long after Hanna was born. It was a bad winter that year, and pneumonia claimed several of our number. Chaya doesn’t really see herself remarrying. So she focuses on Hanna, and on her work.”

 

“I’m sorry,” Tom said quietly.

 

Peval was out. He’d left a note for Chakotay explaining that he’d gone to meet a group of his friends for a game of  _tishka_ , whatever that was. Chakotay decided that he would get a head start on dinner, now that he had the time, and he planned a more elaborate meal than usual. Tom was put to work in the small garden out back - it was planting season all around, it seemed - and by the time he was finished with his task, Peval had returned and the kitchen was filled with the aroma of cooking vegetables.

 

Tom settled in the living room after dinner with a book he had downloaded from the settlement’s database. He couldn’t recall the last time he had read for leisure - not to pass the time or in order to distract himself from the dark thoughts in his head, but just because he _wanted_ to.

 

Peval helped Chakotay clean up from dinner, and Tom listened with half an ear to the conversation between father and son. Peval was a cheerful child, Tom was learning. He didn’t seem too perturbed about anything, and seemed to also lack the angst that teenage children were subject to feeling around this time in their lives. Maybe this was due to his heritage, or to the environment he was growing up in, or both. This was a tight-knit community - they couldn’t afford to be anything less - and the children seemed to be accepting of each other, despite the obvious differences in the two species living in this settlement. Tom knew that it was probably far from that simple, but there was no denying that Peval seemed like a healthy, happy child. A child who adored Chakotay just as much as Chakotay did him.

 

Chakotay and Peval went to sit out back later on that night. Tom could hear their faint voices through the open windows, though he couldn’t make out their conversation. He read for another hour or so. Then, as a slight nighttime chill settled on the house, he set his book aside, fetched a sweater, and went outside.

 

Chakotay was sitting on the deck, his arm around Peval, who was tucked up against his side. The boy had a blanket wrapped around his shoulders, and the two of them were looking up at the sky. Tom sat on Peval’s other side.

 

“Nice night,” he said. The thick band of the Milky Way bisected the sky, and stars were thrown out from it in every direction, scattered like gems across the black.

 

“They’re always like this on Dorvan,” Chakotay said, a hint of pride in his voice. Pride over this gorgeous, desolate planet that was slowly killing her people.

 

“Dad’s telling me about Earth,” Peval said. “I want to visit there someday.”

 

“Can you see it from here?” Tom asked in surprise.

 

“You can see Sol.” Chakotay pointed to a patch of sky; to a star that was indistinguishable from the rest. “Peval’s decided that he wants to apply for the Academy when he's old enough.”

 

“I'll be the first Cardassian,” Peval said cheerfully. “Well, _half_ -Cardassian, but it still counts. Maybe by then we’ll be part of the Federation again, so I’ll be able to apply. I’ve got time.”

 

“Of course,” Chakotay said, squeezing Peval against his side. “You’ll be the brightest recruit they have. Peval’s already learning about orbital mechanics.”

 

“Yeah, Chaya was saying that,” Tom said, suppressing a grin. Chakotay’s pride over the boy was palpable.

 

Peval stayed with them until close to ten, and then he was suddenly on his feet and tugging on his shoes, which had been discarded on the deck earlier.

 

“Got plans!” he said to his dad’s questioning look. “I’ll be back late.”

 

Chakotay sighed. “Of course he will.”

 

He got to his feet, put out his hand, and pulled Tom up as well.

 

"We could go for a walk," Chakotay said. "On the other side of the settlement, there's this -"

 

Tom leaned over and pressed a kiss to the corner of Chakotay’s mouth, silencing him.

 

“Take me to bed,” he whispered.

 

There were so many things that were the same - the way Chakotay stripped him first before removing his own clothes, the kissing, the wandering hands and lips that sought to cover every inch of skin. But though it was heated, it was also unhurried. They’d never taken their time before. It was always done in stolen moments, in too-narrow beds on _Val Jean_ , where the walls were so thin they had to stifle cries and bite back moans. Chakotay’s bed now was large enough for them both, and then some.

 

 _This is a dangerous thing you’ve started, Paris_ , that voice whispered in the back of Tom’s mind later, when he and Chakotay were trying to catch their breath. _You always start things that you can’t finish_. _You always run away instead of facing what you're feeling_.

 

Now _that_ voice sounded suspiciously like the Chakotay he had known in the Maquis, and Tom shook it from his head.

 

“So what was it Chaya said to you?” Chakotay asked. He’d left the bed to fetch a wet cloth, which he was using to clean the sticky mess on their bodies.

 

Tom considered the benefit of lying, decided that he didn’t really see the point of it, and said, “She said that she thinks you need to find yourself some peace.”

 

Chakotay was quiet for a long while. Tom knew that he only had an hour at most before he needed to leave for his own bed, but sleep tugged at him. He had almost drifted off when Chakotay’s arms tightened around his waist.

 

“Don’t get too comfortable, Flyboy,” he said softly.

 

“Won’t,” Tom whispered, feeling as though he had been doused in cold water. “I know better.”

 

\----

 

The next morning, Tom woke and was startled to see bright, golden sunlight streaming in through the windows of his guest room. He checked the chronometer at his bedside, and saw that it read just after nine.

 

“Not working in the fields today?” Tom asked when he found Chakotay in the kitchen after his shower.

 

Chakotay snorted. “Try not to look so excited. No, we’re taking the day off - from that, at least. I’ve got some house calls to make. And so do you.”

 

“House calls? What, you’re a doctor now, too?”

 

“Not while you’re here,” Chakotay said with a smirk. “Now _you’re_ the doctor, Mr. Field Medic.”

 

Great.

 

Tom had a pack of medical supplies that he brought with him everywhere out of habit, and he grabbed it out of his room while Chakotay fetched his own.

 

“We have a stockpile of medical supplies in the same building where we house the food surplus,” Chakotay explained as they walked to the house of their first patient. “But it’s not much, and we try to conserve it as best as we can. A lot of the time, we make our own remedies from what we can find here on the planet. Sometimes that works just fine, but we could really use a medical lab. The ability to manufacture something as simple as antibiotics, for example, would save us all a lot of grief. Anyway, we have healers on the colony but no doctors, and since I took a basic first aid course at the Academy….”

 

“By default, you become the colony’s doctor,” Tom finished for him. “They’ve got you wearing a lot of hats here, Chakotay.”

 

“You don’t know the half of it,” Chakotay agreed. “But I don’t mind. I owe it to them, for having abandoned the tribe for so long.”

 

The first few houses they visited were common illnesses - colds, two people with pneumonia, and one person with a case of the ‘flu. Nothing that was life threatening, as Tom well knew that some of those illnesses could be in certain situations, even in this day and age. After that, there were a few injuries - a fractured wrist and a broken leg, both of which Chakotay had set well. Tom wasn’t sure he could have done it better himself.

 

“I got a lot of practice on the children when they were younger,” Chakotay said with a grimace. “Poor things.”

 

The final house they stopped at was tucked at the end of a lane, under one of the few trees located inside the settlement. 

 

"Who are we seeing here?" Tom asked.

 

"A Cardassian child being treated for 'flu," Chakotay said. He raised his fist and knocked on the solid wood.

 

The child in question looked to be perhaps a year or two older than Peval. He was a full Cardassian, and he introduced himself as Sidal.

 

“How long ago did you first feel sick?” Tom asked, slipping into his routine line of questioning. The boy was flat on his back in bed, and his eyes tracked the movement of the tricorder warily. He couldn't seem to summon the strength to do much else.

 

“Tom’s a friend, you can talk to him,” Chakotay prompted gently.

 

“Few days ago,” Sidal said quietly.

 

“Fever, chills, increased heart rate, rapid breathing… those were your symptoms?” Tom asked. Sidal nodded.

 

“What are you thinking?” Chakotay asked later, when Sidal had fallen asleep and they were in the kitchen with the boy’s parents.

 

“I'd like to take a walk out to the med supply room," Tom said. "Ideally, I want to start him on intravenous fluids, but I don’t know if you have the equipment for it. Maybe I can rig something up, but I won’t know until I see what you have.”

 

“Will he be alright?” Sidal’s mother asked worriedly.

 

Tom gave her a smile. “Of course, ma’am. It’s the ‘flu. It’s just going to take him a bit longer to shake it than it would a human. I want to help him along a bit if possible.”

 

Chakotay said nothing until they were out of the house and trekking toward the supply building. “You don’t think it’s the ‘flu.”

 

“No,” Tom said absently, mind racing as he struggled to make sense of what the tricorder had been telling him. “There's no sign of the virus in his body. Judging by his symptoms, I was going to guess that it’s blood poisoning, but there’s no sign of infection in his bloodstream. But that’s not the strangest part.”

 

“What’s the strangest part?”

 

“His organs are shutting down,” Tom said quietly. Chakotay stopped him with a hand on his arm.

 

“What?”

 

“You heard me,” Tom said impatiently, shaking the hand off and starting off again. “Come on, we don’t have a lot of time. I want a look at your supplies, to see if there's anything we can use to keep him stable long enough to figure out what it is that’s ailing him. Then, you’re taking me on a tour.”

 

“A _what_?”

“A tour,” Tom repeated briskly. “I want to see _every_ case of illness in the settlement, no matter how minor. And I want to see them all today.”

 

\-------

 

Influenza was not an uncommon ailment on Dorvan V. Even though there was a particular season for it, the disease still struck all year ‘round. In all, there were twenty cases of ‘flu in the settlement. Most of the ‘flu patients were recovering nicely, but there were a total of seven who had not gotten better over the past few weeks. Sidal was just the latest of these such patients. The one who had been ill the longest had fallen sick almost three weeks ago. 

 

“You didn’t think this was worth mentioning?” Tom asked, waving the list of twenty patients under Chakotay’s nose later as they stood in Chakotay’s kitchen.

 

“No,” Chakotay said flatly.

 

“Any reason why not?”

 

“Because it’s not unusual. Twenty cases of ‘flu? That’s nothing.”

 

“Even if some of them aren’t improving?”

 

“That’s the nature of things out here, Tom,” Chakotay said quietly. “Sometimes people don’t get better. Or, sometimes it takes them much longer than you expect.”

 

“Right, well, what’s happening here _is_ unusual. It's not right. And I want you to explain this to me,” Tom said. He pushed the PADD into Chakotay’s hands and pointed at the screen. “What do you notice?”

 

Chakotay skimmed through the list of names. “I don’t know.”

 

“Look harder.”

 

Chakotay pursed his lips, but read through the names again.

 

“There are a lot of children on this list,” he said finally.

 

Tom nodded. “Yes. And?”

 

“And _what,_ Tom?”

 

“How about the fact that out of all the cases of so-called ‘flu, the _children_ are the ones who aren’t getting better - or, at least, are slower to recover,” Tom said. “And how about the fact that they are _all_ children of Cardassian heritage?”

 

Tom tapped a couple of buttons on the PADD, eliminating all but seven of the patients. Chakotay went ashen as he read through the names. He swore. “ _Hell_. How did we miss that?”

 

“Like you said, ‘flu isn’t anything unusual on this planet,” Tom said. He held up his tricorder. “Except it’s not ‘flu. Those seven children - the ones on that list who aren’t getting better - have the same ailment that Sidal does. Their organs are shutting down, even though their symptoms make it only look like ‘flu. For now.”

 

Chakotay tossed the PADD down on the table and passed a hand over his eyes. 

 

“We need to tell the leaders,” Tom said. “And we have to -”

 

“No,” Chakotay said, cutting him off. “No, we don’t tell _anyone_. Not yet. We need more evidence before we incite mass panic on this colony.”

 

“Time isn’t exactly on our side here, Chief,” Tom said, bracing his hands on his hips and glaring at Chakotay.

 

“I’m not proposing that we do _nothing_ , but we can’t go to anyone yet until we tell them precisely _what_ is causing this illness,” Chakotay said. “Is it genetic? Environmental? Is there a chance - is it possible that this is something latent that the Cardassians left behind? That they always intended to harm these children? Or is it -"

 

He broke off, looking stricken. Tom felt himself go cold, and he said, "Or is it someone in the colony?"

 

Chakotay nodded. He'd mentioned a few nights back that there were people here who still saw the Cardassian children as _other_. Tom felt sick at the implication.

 

“Right, then,” Tom said finally. “Keeping quiet about this might be best for now, but we still need to work _fast_ on this. The first thing we should do is identify all the commonalities here - are the children ever in the same place? Do they drink the same water, eat the same food? Do they - I don’t know - all play in the same field after school? _Anything_ could be helpful at this point.”

 

Chakotay nodded to himself. “We’ll need to interview the families in order to figure out their movements over the past few weeks. But we have to do it discreetly so as not to arouse suspicion. Tom.”

 

Tom paused in the doorway. “Yeah?”

 

“How long do they have?” Chakotay’s expression was haunted. “How long will it stay like this - like the ‘flu?”

 

“Whatever is doing this to them is slow-acting. But now that the organ failure has started, it’s going to gradually speed up. Sort of like a roller coaster - slow build-up, and a quick finish.” Tom rubbed the back of his neck with one hand. “Maybe two weeks for the worst of the cases, four weeks at the outset. Chakotay, if we don’t have an answer within the week, we’re going to have to tell the ruling council.”

 

Chakotay nodded, giving in a hell of a lot easier than Tom was expecting. “Agreed.”

 

Tom couldn't even begin to theorize why those seven children weren’t responding to any kind of treatment or fighting off the illness on their own. To buy them some time, he fixed up seven makeshift IV drips out of tubing he had found in the medical supply room and started getting the children fluids directly. He didn’t think it would solve the problem, but it couldn’t make matters worse.

 

He started reading up on Cardassian physiology that night, using all the information that was available in the shuttle’s database. There wasn’t a lot known about Cardassians, and he committed most of it to memory pretty quickly. The next day, they managed to interview four of the families  - not in any overt manner, but over casual conversation while they were all working out in the fields. At lunchtime, Tom and Chakotay met to compare notes.

 

“Sidal’s parents said that sometimes he plays with his friends out in the fields behind the schoolhouse,” Tom said. “And he always walks home. His route takes him along the south end of the settlement.”

 

“That’s the same route the other children take,” Chakotay said. “Maybe it’s something in the fauna on that side of the settlement?”

 

“Wouldn’t hurt looking into,” Tom said. “We’re also going to want to check those fields behind the school, and maybe the inside of the building itself. The children spend most of their days there, after all.”

 

“But none of the human children are sick.”

 

“Maybe it’s not something that is harmful to humans,” Tom pointed out.

 

Picking Peval up that afternoon from school served a dual purpose this time. They got to the schoolhouse early and were let inside the building under the pretenses of Chakotay giving Tom a tour. Tom took scans surreptitiously with his tricorder while Chakotay paced the halls, and came up empty.

 

“I wish we knew more about what we were looking for,” Tom said in frustration as they descended the steps just before classes let out. “It’s almost useless to take these scans. Nothing looks unusual to me because I know what’s harmful to humans and what isn’t. What we really need is a sample of blood from the affected children.”

 

Chakotay nodded to himself. “Sidal’s parents at least will be willing. Probably even Marta’s and Ledo’s as well. As for the rest… they’re deeply distrustful of outsiders, Tom.”

 

“We’ll make do with what we have, I guess,” Tom sighed. Children were starting to exit the schoolhouse in drips and drabs, and he watched for Peval’s shaggy mop of hair. The boy was among the last to leave the building. He waved goodbye to a few of his friends and walked over to where Chakotay and Tom were standing.

 

“Hey,” Chakotay greeted with a smile. It slipped from his face a moment later. “You all right? You look pale.”

 

“I’m _fine_ , Dad,” Peval said in exasperation, ducking the outstretched hand that sought to test his temperature. “Spirits, you _always_ get like this when you play nursemaid. Come on, let’s just go home. I’m _starved_.”

 

Peval disappeared into his room when they got home, saying that he had homework, and Tom helped Chakotay cook dinner. He’d never lived without a replicator for extended periods of time before - sans his time with the Maquis, and they mostly scavenged for food - and cooking was something he’d never bothered to learn. But he could see how the rhythm of it could be appealing to some people, and he couldn’t deny that there were small pleasures to be found in it for him - the way the corded muscles of Chakotay’s forearms flexed as he chopped vegetables, for one, or how his silvery hair quickly turned damp in the warm kitchen.

 

“Peval, dinner!” he called as Tom started carrying dishes outside. When Peval didn’t answer, Chakotay went to check on him.

 

“Everything all right?” Tom asked when Chakotay joined him outside a few minutes later.

 

“Yeah, he just fell asleep,” Chakotay said, shaking his head. “He’ll be out here in a moment.”

 

Peval did join them a little while later, but he looked exhausted. He poked at his food, disinterested, and only ate a little bit of it.

 

Chakotay leaned over and pressed the back of his hand against Peval’s forehead, and this time the boy didn’t shy away from him.

 

“Yeah, that’s a fever,” he said quietly. “Go back to bed, Peval. Maybe you’ll be able to sleep it off.”

 

Peval nodded and went back to his room without protest. Tom met Chakotay’s eyes, and knew that they were both thinking the same thing. But Chakotay said, “It’s just a cold. He always gets them this time of year.”

 

“Yeah, probably,” Tom agreed.

 

Peval slept until almost midnight, waking as Tom and Chakotay were preparing to turn in. He came padding into the kitchen in search of water, his eyes bleary and his hair sticking up in all directions.

 

“How are you feeling?” Chakotay asked, feeling automatically for Peval’s forehead.

 

“Fine,” he said, and Chakotay nodded, seemingly satisfied with what he felt.

 

“The fever’s broken,” Chakotay informed Tom later as they stood in the hallway, about to part and leave for their own rooms.

 

“That’s good,” Tom said, hoping that it sounded genuine. Deep down, he had a feeling that this was a mere respite before the onslaught. Judging from the expression on Chakotay’s face, and how he couldn’t force any cheer in his eyes, he felt the same.

 

In the morning, Peval didn’t wake with the dawn as he normally did, and Chakotay’s expression when he emerged from Peval’s room said it all. The illness that had seemingly dissipated the night before was back with a vengeance.

 

“Let’s move him out into the living room,” Tom said, sliding automatically back into his role as field medic. “It’s cooler than the rest of the house, and we can keep an eye on him.”

 

With the tricorder, he managed to confirm that Peval's vitals were almost identical to Sidal's, meaning that Peval had come down with the same mysterious ailment. Tom then rigged up an IV line for Peval as he had done for the others. Chakotay made up a bed for the boy on one of the sofas in the living room, and Tom secured the drip on a nearby wall.

 

“I need to go check on the others,” Tom said, and Chakotay nodded.

 

As Tom expected, none of the other children had shown any improvement. He was able to give them medications to ease their aches and fevers, but that was only a temporary fix, not a cure.

 

He wasn’t sure where to go from here, and would have to talk it over with Chakotay when he got back to the house. He wondered if any of the equipment in the climate lab that Chaya ran could be put to good use, and if it could be appropriated as medical lab equipment for the time being.

 

But by the time he got back to the house, it was late in the evening, and Chakotay was sitting at Peval’s bedside. He was in a chair adjacent to the sofa, his chin propped on a fist while he watched the rise and fall of Peval’s chest.

 

“How are they?” Chakotay asked without looking away from Peval.

 

“No change in any of them. How’s he doing?”

 

Chakotay lifted one shoulder in a shrug. He looked haggard. “No change. His fever’s holding steady. He keeps waking himself up, either with chills or because he’s too hot.”

 

Tom rubbed a hand across his face. “We need to figure out something soon, Chakotay.”

 

“Tomorrow we start looking at the local fauna,” Chakotay said. Tom nodded to himself. It was as good a plan as any.

 

“I’ll take this watch,” Tom said softly. He pressed Chakotay’s shoulder. “Go on, get some sleep.”

 

He didn’t expect Chakotay to actually leave the room, and wasn’t surprised when all Chakotay did was strip down to his t-shirt and underwear and camp out on the other sofa. Tom took his abandoned chair and settled in for a long night.

 

Peval’s sleep was fitful - not enough to wake his father, but he woke himself on more than one occasion, usually shuddering out of sleep with a new wave of chills. Tom was there to ease him back down, to fetch a glass of water if needed or to provide him an anchor to reality after a fevered dream.

 

Chaya arrived with the dawn, bearing a large pot of soup and some fresh blankets.

 

“I thought he might like a clean bed,” she said softly to Tom as they stood in the kitchen. “How’s he doing?”

 

“About the same,” Tom said. Chaya’s hand went to her throat, and she absently rubbed the ring she wore around her neck between two fingers.

 

“There are others sick just like this,” she whispered. “Little ones who aren’t getting better. We always lose a few of our number in the winter, but this is different. It’s spring, and they’re far too young.”

 

Tom had automatically gravitated over to the coffee maker, and he poured two mugs of the steaming liquid. He handed one to Chaya. “Did you know Peval’s parents?”

 

Her expression shuttered, but she nodded after a moment. “Yes.”

 

“Did they survive the end of the war?”

 

This time, her answer was longer in coming. “His father did.”

 

“And he made a conscious decision to leave Peval behind?”

 

Chaya looked at him. She searched his face for a moment before saying, “Chakotay has worked very hard to make sure that Peval knows nothing about his parents. As far as he’s concerned - as any of us are concerned - they are both dead. I don’t intend to compromise his efforts to protect Peval.”

 

She left after finishing the cup of coffee, and made Tom promise to call her if there was a change in Peval’s condition.

 

Chakotay woke not long after that. Tom was taking Peval’s vitals when Chakotay sat up and stretched with a groan. Peval slept soundly through it all.

 

“How is he?” Chakotay asked softly.

 

“Restless night, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he sleeps through the morning,” Tom said. He got to his feet and rubbed his eyes. He felt as though he had bits of grit in them. “Everything else is holding steady. No worse, no better.”

 

Chakotay leaned over the bed, braced his hands on the mattress, and pressed his lips to Peval’s forehead. Tom had a sudden vision of Chakotay waking Peval up in much the same way when the boy was five, of little Peval giggling and shying away from the scratch of Chakotay’s beard. But this time, Peval didn’t move at his father’s touch. Chakotay pushed a damp lock of hair off Peval’s forehead and watched the sleeping boy for a moment.

 

“Come on,” Chakotay said finally, pulling Tom from his thoughts. “We have work to do.”


	4. Chapter 4

Sidal died at noon.

 

His parents informed Chakotay before they did anyone else, before even the official healers on the colony, and so he was the first one to the house. He left Tom behind to look after Peval, and told him to keep the news to himself as long as possible.

 

Peval slept through until the mid-afternoon, at which point he pulled himself out of bed long enough for a cool shower and half a bowl of the mushroom soup before he fell into a light slumber again. He woke again that evening, when Chakotay returned again.

 

Tom left it to Chakotay to break the news about Sidal. He stood in the kitchen and made his fourth - fifth? - cup of coffee of the day, half-listening to the conversation in the other room and trying to be as unobtrusive as possible. Every once in a while, he threw a glance into the living room. Saw Chakotay sitting next to Peval on the sofa, speaking to him in a low voice, and then watched as Chakotay gathered the boy into his arms. Peval’s exhaustion pulled him quickly under again, though Chakotay continued to hold him long after he’d fallen asleep again.

 

“We need to tell the ruling council,” Chakotay said later, once he'd ease Peval back onto the cushions. He looked as though he had aged several years in the space of an afternoon. Tom lifted a hand to his face and smoothed his thumb over the lines at the corners of Chakotay’s eyes.

 

“Yeah,” he said finally. “We do.”

 

Chakotay called an emergency meeting of the council later that same night. Chaya came to stay with Peval so that Tom could go with him.

 

“They might not be very receptive,” Chakotay warned.

 

“I’ve spent my life dealing with people who won’t listen to me,” Tom said, and it came out more bitter than he’d been intending. “What’s a few more?”

 

The ruling council on Dorvan V was made up of seven people in all - three men and four women. They held sessions in the only building on the colony that was two stories tall, and it was visible from anywhere in the settlement. They had all been roused from bed, but none of them looked irritated because of it. Chakotay’s word again, Tom reasoned. It carried enough weight behind it that when he said that something needed to be done, it was followed through without question.

 

Tom hoped they would listen tonight without any misgivings. The rest of the children didn’t have time for indecision.

 

Chakotay greeted the council in his native language. He then switched smoothly to Standard as he gestured to Tom and said, “This is Tom Paris, formerly a lieutenant in Starfleet. He served with me on _Voyager_ , where he was a pilot and medic.”

 

Tom got several appraising glances and no surprised ones. He supposed that Chakotay had needed to petition the council before putting through the paperwork that allowed him to travel to Dorvan, so the council already knew about his presence on the planet. He straightened his shoulders slightly, feeling as though he was twenty again and standing before a disciplinary board at the Academy.

 

“We’ve come with news,” Chakotay continued. “There is a situation developing on the colony.”

 

“The illness,” one of the women said, and Chakotay inclined his head.

 

“As you know, we lost a child earlier today,” he said quietly. “We’re trying to make sure that we don’t lose another. Tom is the one who realized that this problem is not a simple breakout of ‘flu.”

 

Into the short pause that followed, Tom stepped in and said, “There are several cases of an illness on this colony that looks like ‘flu, but isn’t. All of those affected are children of Cardassian heritage. I’m told that over the past few weeks, these children have slowly come down with an illness that doesn’t improve. Over the past couple of days, they have all become bedridden. I’ve been tracking this illness using information Chakotay has given me. It seems as though the full Cardassian children, all seven of them, fell ill first. Now the half-Cardassian children are becoming sick.”

 

“Peval came down with it this morning,” Chakotay explained quietly. “And Sidal is dead. We need to move quickly on this.”

 

“And what exactly is it you’re asking of us?” one of the men asked. He stepped forward, towards Chakotay. Of the council, he was the only one who had listened to Tom’s speech with his arms crossed and a furrow between his brows.

 

“We’re in need of manpower,” Chakotay said. “We don’t know _what_ it is that’s affecting these children, but it needs to be something they have in common. Perhaps the food they’ve eaten recently, or fauna they’ve interacted with. There’s something on this planet that is affecting only the Cardassian children, and we need to figure out what it is - and how to combat it.”

 

“Perhaps Cardassians are simply inept at fighting off the ‘flu,” the man said. “Peval was always a sickly child to begin with, if I remember correctly.”

 

A muscle twitched in Chakotay’s jaw. “Now is not the time for your prejudices, Tamati. We all know how you feel about having the children on this planet. As ever, you are still in the minority.”

 

Tamati was unmoved. Tom studied him as he stared hard at Chakotay. He was perhaps the youngest on the council, a handful of years older than Tom at the most. And from the ice in Chakotay’s tone, the two of them had a history.

 

“Much as it pains me to say this, Chakotay, I feel that Tamati may have a point,” one of the women said. She was tall enough to look Tom in the eye, and she wore her graying hair in a braid that fell over her right shoulder.

 

“Kiri -”

 

She held up a hand. Chakotay fell silent.

 

“How do you know these aren’t cases of ‘flu?” she asked Tom.

 

“I’ve taken scans of the children,” Tom said. “There’s no illness in their bodies, but their organs are slowly shutting down. ‘Flu doesn’t do that.”

 

“Scans can be faked,” Tamati said quietly.

 

“To what end?” Chakotay snapped. “Why would Tom do that? And I would not bring you information that I hadn’t verified myself!”

 

“Your child is sick, and you are acting irrationally because of it. Enough so that you are relying on the word of an _outsider_.”

 

“He’s the closest thing we have to a doctor,” Chakotay shot back.

 

“We have healers on the colony,” Tamati said calmly.

 

“Yes, and not one person who was trained in medical science,” Chakotay said impatiently. “Tom has field experience. He saved _lives_ on _Voyager,_ and we need to _listen_ to him. Or all of the children are going to die, and there’s nothing we can do to stop it.”

 

That silenced the council.

 

“Please,” Chakotay said quietly, when no one spoke. “My child’s life is on the line here.”

 

“You treat every child on this colony as though they are your own,” one of the other men said. Everyone turned to look at him. He sighed. “And I have always respected that. Following your heart over your mind may be irrational, but it’s never led us wrong before. I move that we cancel school for the next week and ask that families keep their children - _all_ children - away from each other if at all possible. Chakotay, tell us how many people you need and for what purpose, and we will see it done.”

 

He glanced at the rest of the council. They all agreed, sans Tamati, but one dissenting voice alone could not overrule the other six. Chakotay’s shoulders sagged in relief, and he quietly thanked the council. Tom did the same, and then they were out again into the cool night.

 

\----

 

Peval’s rest that night was interrupted almost hourly by chills, night sweats, or a new symptom - pain. Chaya went home with Hanna shortly after Tom and Chakotay relieved her, and Chakotay prepared to spend another night at Peval’s bedside. This time, though, neither he nor Tom slept much. Tom had painkillers that only worked for so long, and he was afraid to use them all at once and then leave Peval without anything to help the pain as time went on. So he moderated their use, and Peval woke each time a dose was wearing off.

 

Around three in the morning, after Peval woke in tears because he was exhausted and pained and so tired of feeling sick, Chakotay crawled onto the couch with him. He took Peval into his arms and lay there with him, soothing him back to sleep. Chakotay soon followed, and the two of them slept for a solid three hours, the most any of them got that night. Tom slept in the chair for a couple of hours, once he realized that his patient was out for good now, and woke with a crick in his neck as dawn started to seep through the windows.

 

Chakotay disentangled himself from Peval’s sleeping form and joined Tom in the kitchen. He wrapped his arms around Tom’s waist from behind and pressed a kiss to the side of his throat. They stood like that for a few moments, until Chakotay broke away to pour himself some coffee and Tom went to shower.

 

The day was long and discouraging. Chakotay was able to find a neighbor who could watch over both Peval and Hanna so that Chaya could accompany them to the lab. Once there, they faced the long, arduous task of analyzing all the different plant samples had been collected from all over the settlement since the meeting with the council last night. True to their word, the ruling council had found manpower for Chakotay. Tom hoped that it would be enough.

 

With Sidal gone, there were only two children he could draw blood samples from. Peval was another, but Tom thought they might find the issue faster if they worked with the full Cardassians first. He went out to retrieve the blood samples while Chaya and Chakotay started sifting through the plant samples, and he returned with news.

 

“Seven more children have fallen ill,” he said. “All of them are half-Cardassian.”

 

“With Peval, that’s a total of fourteen sick children and one dead child,” Chakotay said darkly. “And it’s likely the others are going to become sick as well.”

 

“And soon,” Tom said. “It’s happening quickly now, whatever it is. Which means the children were _all_ exposed to the same thing, and around the same time. And it’s taken this long to manifest itself.”

 

Chaya had reconfigured a couple of computers so that they would analyze the plant samples, and Chakotay had rigged up a scanning device out of an old soil analysis device. Tom used his simple tricorder on the blood samples and compared it to the data they pulled from the plant samples. The wait times were agony. He knew that this task would have been finished yesterday if they had access to labs as sophisticated as those found in Federation space. He felt like he was flying blind through an asteroid belt, making wild guesses instead of educated ones based on evidence.

 

And it was all for nothing. By the end of the afternoon, all they had determined was that the fauna seemed safe. The plants hadn’t drastically changed composition in years, and there was nothing about the biology of the children that indicated their bodies would suddenly be adverse to the local plant life.

 

“It’s not the fauna,” Chaya said finally. She straightened from the console she’d been leaning over and pinched the bridge of her nose. “It’s something else entirely.”

 

“Think, think, think,” Tom muttered to himself, rubbing his forehead. He pointed at Chakotay. “What’s changed? This happened once before, and you figured out that the issue was meat. So what is it this time? Why would they be healthy for _years_ , and then suddenly all fall ill again?”

 

“This planet’s dying; it’s not like we’ve had an abundance of new plant life or animals that have suddenly cropped up over the past few weeks,” Chakotay said wearily.

 

 _Past few weeks_. Tom felt the bottom drop out of his stomach as the words struck him, called to mind an earlier conversation.

 

“It’s the water,” Tom whispered. He felt his eyes widen. “Damn it, Chakotay, it’s the _water_.”

 

“What?” Chakotay looked startled.

 

“You said the composition of the water was changing - so fast that even over the past couple of _weeks_ it’s altered quite a bit. When did the first children fall ill?”

 

“A few weeks ago,” Chakotay said.

 

“And now they’re _all_ ill. It was the full Cardassian children first, and then the part-humans. Something about the composition of the water is detrimental to Cardassians. And it’s in everything - the plants, the food, _everything_. That’s why they aren’t getting better, because it’s been building up in their systems all this time. So what’s in that water?”

 

He turned to Chaya and asked, “You have beds here?”

 

“Just the one bunk, for whenever I pull late nights,” Chaya said, pointing over his shoulder. Her own eyes were wide now at the implication.

 

“Good. We’re going to need it,” Tom said. He turned back to Chakotay. “We need your kid. And some water.”

 

They went back to the house to retrieve Peval and a large container of water. The boy was unsteady on his feet, and they hadn’t gone more than a few yards before Chakotay lifted into his arms and started to carry him, one arm behind Peval’s knees and the other around his waist. Peval groaned at the sudden movement. He looped his arms around Chakotay’s neck and pressed his face into Chakotay’s shoulder.

 

“Dad…” he protested.

 

“Hush,” Chakotay said. “It will be faster if I just carry you, all right?”

 

And a better idea, too, for Peval fell into a fitful doze before they reached the lab again. Tom keyed in the code he remembered Chaya entering and allowed Chakotay to go in first. Chaya directed him to a small room off the lab, and he settled Peval into the bunk there.

 

“I might need him for multiple blood samples. It was just easier to bring him here,” Tom said. He handed the container of water to Chaya. “Start analyzing a few drops of this. I need to draw some of Peval’s blood.”

 

The boy didn’t react as Tom drew three vials of blood from him. He put one of the vials through the rigged scanner while Chaya used another on the water, and then after that all they could do was wait.

 

Chakotay had pulled a chair into the small room off the lab, and he was watching Peval sleep. Chaya sat on the floor next to her nephew’s bunk and stroked her fingers through his hair. Tom put a hand on the back of Chakotay’s neck.

 

“About twenty more minutes,” he said. “Then we’ll have some answers here.”

 

“You hope,” Chakotay said quietly.

 

“Well, it’s not possible to know _less_ than we do now.” Tom squeezed the back of Chakotay’s neck. “He’s going to be okay.”

 

“You don’t know that,” Chakotay pointed out. He sighed and rubbed his face. “Spirits, Tom. I can’t stop thinking about Sidal and the hell that his parents are going through right now. The _agony_ of it all. No one should have to bury a child. And I can’t - I can’t lose him.”

 

“We’re going to figure this out,” Tom said firmly.

 

Chaya leaned over and gripped Chakotay’s hand. “It’s great fortune that Tom is here with us now, at this exact time and place. The Spirits ensured that your paths would cross again, at a time when you would need him most. He _will_ figure this out.”

 

Chakotay covered her hand with his own and gave a strained smile that indicated he didn’t believe a word of what she said. Tom wished he had her confidence.

 

Twenty minutes later, Tom was in front of the computers in the other room, Chaya at his side. Chakotay stayed with the sleeping Peval.

 

“All right, help me out here,” Tom said. “You’re the one who’s been monitoring the global changes the closest. What’s not supposed to be here?”

 

He pulled up the water analysis. Chaya peered at the screen.

 

“Iron, hydrogen, oxygen…” she murmured her breath. “Allamite… nothing that I haven’t seen here before.”

 

“What was that last one?” Tom asked, frowning at her.

 

“Allamite. It’s an element found generally in asteroids, meteors, and other planetary bodies on the fringes of Federation space,” Chaya told him. She shrugged. “It’s an abundant element, not very valuable. Sometimes meteoroid strikes bring the element down to planets, which is how it happened to end up in our water supply. It’s harmless.”

 

“To humans,” Tom said softly. “When was the last meteoroid strike on this planet?”

 

“Uh - a few months ago. More than half a year, actually,” Chaya said. “It wasn’t much of a strike - more like a meteoroid shower. It was global. We were finding fragments of meteorites for weeks, but they were minuscule.”

 

“But it was enough to cover the entire planet, introduce a new element that eventually got into the water supply,” Tom said quietly, his mind racing. “Do you have a sample of allamite here, in the lab?”

 

Chaya went and fetched a piece of meteorite she had kept from the last strike, and Tom grabbed a vial of Peval’s blood. When she returned, he uncapped the vial and dropped the piece of pure allamite inside of it.

 

The moment the allamite touched the blood, it started to boil. Tom had barely managed to put the top back on the vial before the blood inside was roiling and threatening to escape. It grew hot in his hand, and he set it on a nearby workstation. Chaya stared at it, eyes wide.

 

“Well,” Tom said shakily. “I guess that explains things.”

 

“The children -” Chaya gasped.

 

“The allamite must have only recently built up a noticeable presence in the water supply,” Tom said, thinking out loud. “And then, over the past few weeks, as it got into _everything,_ it started to build up in the systems of the Cardassian children, and they started to appear ill.”

 

“So it’s a poison,” Chakotay said from the doorway behind them. They both turned to look at him. “That’s why it looked like blood poisoning to you earlier, and that’s why their organs are shutting down. They’re slowly being poisoned. How are we going to fix this?”

 

“It’s in everything,” Chaya said. “The water, the food, everything. We need to stop them drinking _and_ eating. Immediately.”

 

“But only for so long,” Chakotay said.

 

“We need to filter the water,” Tom said. “We need to figure out a way to create a filtration system that will get rid of the allamite.”

 

“And - what? - grow new food in a matter of a day or two? Because the children can’t be without food for much longer than that,” Chakotay said. “And how do you propose we get the toxin out of their systems? Surely too much of it has built up now to expect their bodies to filter out what’s there, even if we do stop introducing new allamite into their bodies.”

 

“One problem at a time,” Tom said. He turned to Chaya. “Can you get word out to the colonists, right now, that we need to have the Cardassian children stop ingesting water and food immediately?”

 

She nodded and left. Tom turned to Chakotay.

 

“I have an idea,” he said, drawing a deep breath. “But you need to listen to me for a moment.”

 

“If you have an idea, I’ll do nothing _but_ listen,” Chakotay said, coming over to him.

 

“Marry me,” Tom said.

 

“ _What_?” Chakotay looked aghast. “Tom, we can’t - are you _insane_?”

 

“Listen to me,” Tom said hurriedly. “I can fix this, Chakotay, but not without starting an intra-galactic incident. We can filter the water, but I need parts from the shuttle in order to do it. A new filtration system is the only way you’re going to get these kids clean water again, since this is a planet-wide issue. They’ll _die_ otherwise.”

 

“Don’t you think I know that?” Chakotay asked through gritted teeth.

 

“So just take a moment and _think_. We don’t have anyone who can come to our aid, but we _do_ have a state-of-the-art shuttle at our disposal. If we cannibalize it for parts, we can build a filtration system. But that’s my only ride out of here, Chakotay, and you know what would happen if it comes to light that a Federation citizen sneaked past the border and set up camp on a Cardassian planet. So - marry me. That will automatically make me a legal Cardassian citizen, and it will stave off another conflict.”

 

“That medical transport will miss their shuttle,” Chakotay pointed out slowly.

 

“They’re a _medical transport_. They’ll understand if we use that shuttle to save children.” Tom leaned closer. “Look, I _know_ it’s going to make things awkward, but it doesn’t have to mean anything, okay? It’s just a political move. We can use it to save these children _and_ prevent another war.”

 

“What if I wanted it to mean something?” Chakotay asked quietly. Tom’s mouth went dry. “But not like this. Tom, you’d never be able to _leave_.”

 

“And what if I didn’t want to?” Tom countered. “I _want_ to stay here. I want to take time to figure things out with you. For as long as it takes us to get this _right_.”

 

Chakotay stared at him for a long moment.

 

“Water’s not our only problem,” he said finally. “We need untainted food, too, or the children will still die.”

 

“Yeah, thought of that, too,” Tom said with a nod. “And again -”

 

“We use the shuttle,” Chakotay realized. “The replicator -”

 

“ - will be able to give us food not grown on this colony, yes. But there is the issue of it needing to feed seven children for a long period of time, until we can grow _new_ food that is nourished by water that has been through this as-yet-unbuilt filtration system. The replicator only has enough matter to feed one person over a long period of time, not seven.”

 

Chakotay rubbed his forehead. “You want to dismantle the shuttle. Any parts not used as part of the new filtration system will be fed into the matter reserves of the replicator.”

 

Tom nodded. “Anything else on this planet might have come into contact with allamite, _except_ for the shuttle. Once we clean the dust off of it, there won’t be a risk of contamination.”

 

Chakotay was slowly shaking his head. Tom felt a flare of irritation.

 

“You got a better idea, Chief?” he asked.

 

“No,” Chakotay said. “No, it’s just - Tom, you’d be giving up _everything_ if you did this.”

 

“No,” Tom said. "For the first time, I'm doing what  _I_ want to do. This is my choice, and I want to make it."

 

Chakotay regarded him for a moment.

 

“All right, then,” he said finally. He patted Tom’s cheek. “First things first. Let’s go get married.”

 

\----

 

The building that housed meetings of the ruling council looked different the daylight. It seemed more worn than Tom remembered, dusty and windswept. Chakotay paused as he reached the door; hesitated as he lifted a hand to key in the code.

 

“This isn’t exactly going to be pleasant,” Chakotay said grimly.

 

“What do you mean?”

 

Chakotay looked suddenly uncomfortable. “The only person on this colony who has the legal and spiritual authority to marry a couple is Tamati. It’s his primary function in the governing body.”

 

“Ah.” Tom couldn’t say that he was thrilled to run into Tamati again, who seemed to just generally be an unpleasant person, but it was a necessary step in their plan.

 

“He’s going to see right away that we’re doing this for another purpose.” Chakotay sighed. He finally keyed in his code and opened the door to allow them entrance. “Thing is, we used to be involved. He’s not going to make this easy for the two of us.”

 

“I take it things ended badly,” Tom said dryly, remembering Tamati’s attitude towards the Cardassian children. Chakotay snorted.

 

“To put it lightly.”

 

Chakotay led them down a short corridor to a small office tucked in the back of the building. Tamati was working inside, his head bent over a stack of papers. Chakotay rapped on his door.

 

Tamati looked up, his impassive expression souring when he saw who was standing there. He got to his feet and clasped his hands behind his back.

 

“Chakotay,” he said coolly. “What can I do for you?”

 

“We’re in need of your services,” Chakotay said, though the words sounded as though they left a bad taste on his tongue. He gestured to Tom. “We need you to marry us.”

 

A range of emotions flickered across Tamati’s face before he could school his expression into one of neutrality. Tom noticed shock, confusion, and something resembling regret before Tamati clamped down on them.

 

“I’m afraid you’ll need to run that one by me again,” he said quietly.

 

“We need you to marry us,” Chakotay repeated calmly. “And you’ll need to send the copy of the documents to the Detapa Council and the Federation.”

 

“This is absurd -”

 

“No,” Chakotay broke in. “It is very much real, Tamati. Why do you think I went through so much effort to get Tom here in the first place?”

 

Tamati’s eyes flashed. “You risked starting another war by bringing a civilian across the border under false pretenses so that he could warm your bed?”

 

“It’s more than that, and you know it,” Chakotay said.

 

Tamati drew himself up to his full height. He was taller than them both.

 

“A marriage contract is not one to be entered into lightly,” he said stiffly to Tom. “Our unions are not just legal, but spiritual. They are not meant to be broken.”

 

“I know,” Tom said, heading him off before he could go any further. “I don’t intend to break any bond I forge with this man.”

 

Tamati glowered at them both, as though he could force them to back down by sheer force of will. But Chakotay and Tom stared back resolutely, and Tamati’s expression darkened.

 

“You will need to find a witness,” he said tightly, going back to his desk and preparing to sit down.

 

Chakotay went to the door and called down the hall, “Kiri!”

 

The woman Tom had met in the chambers of the ruling council appeared in the doorway to Tamati’s office moments later. She was without her formal robes, and was rather in civilian wear. It made her appear no less imposing.

 

“We need a witness to the signing of marriage documents,” Chakotay told her briskly. She absorbed this without a reaction.

 

“I see,” she said finally. She looked at Tamati, who appeared as though he wanted to strangle someone. “Have you prepared the documents yet, Tamati?”

 

“No,” he said in a strained voice.

 

“Then I will assist you,” Kiri said. She went over to his desk and picked up a writing instrument. “Your full name, please, Mr. Paris?”

 

It was half an hour of tedious paperwork. Kiri and Tamati had to fill in all manner of information about the two of them, from their birthdates and birth places to the names of their parents.

 

“Will you be having the bonding ceremony today as well?” Kiri asked Chakotay at one point. Tom tried not to look confused and resisted shooting a glance at Chakotay.

 

“No,” Chakotay said. “We just would like to have the paperwork completed and submitted. The bonding ceremony will take place at a later date.”

 

If Kiri found this suspicious, she said nothing. She simply made note of this on one of the documents. Tamati, however, tossed his writing instrument down on his desk and turned to her.

 

“This is a sham,” he snarled. “No bonding ceremony? This is clearly a ploy to allow this - this _outsider_ to remain on our planet indefinitely.”

 

“We do not own this planet, Tamati. We cannot dictate who lives here and who doesn’t,” Kiri said calmly, unfazed by his outburst. “And it is not our place to speculate on a relationship we are not part of. If these two men say they are in love and intend to be married, then I have no reason not to believe them.”

 

When the documents had been filled out and verified, Kiri then passed them over for Tom and Chakotay to sign. They affixed their signatures to the bottom of each page. Kiri did the same, and then - though with great reluctance - Tamati added his signature as well.

 

“In the eyes of the Federation and the Cardassian Union, you are now married,” Kiri said, gathering up all of the documents and handing them to Tamati, who took them over to a nearby computer terminal to be processed and sent off. “In the eyes of the tribe, however, your union will not be complete until the bonding ceremony.”

 

Chakotay inclined his head. “Of course. I don’t intend to ignore our traditions.”

 

“I never thought that you would,” Kiri said. She gripped first his hand, and then Tom’s. “I wish you every happiness, gentlemen.”

 

She left the office. Chakotay put an arm around Tom’s waist and pulled him in for a kiss. Behind them, Tamati cleared his throat.

 

“The documents have been sent to both your respective governments,” he said stiffly. “We will keep the originals on file here in the building. Here is your copy of the license.”

 

He handed the document to Chakotay, who took it.

 

“Perhaps you have been away too long and have forgotten,” Tamati said to him in a low voice, completely ignoring Tom, “that the bonding ceremony will not work if the two parties plan to enter into a union under false pretenses. The ceremony is not just words and ink and signatures. It cannot be fooled. It will see through this sham the way the Detapa Council and Starfleet Command will not.”

 

“I am aware,” Chakotay said calmly.

 

“And yet you still wish to go through with it.”

 

Chakotay gave him a long look.

 

“Goodbye, Tamati,” he said finally.

 

\----

 

They dismantled the shuttle that night.

 

Twenty people turned out to help. The replicator was removed first and set up in Chakotay’s house. Three people manned it, and they started replicating meals to take to the stricken children. All nonessential pieces of the shuttle were then brought to the house as they were removed - bulkheads, frames, extra blankets and pillows, anything that was not conducive to building a water filtration system.

 

Tom reasoned that the shuttle’s own water reclamation system could be modified and put into place in the settlement’s aquifer. He hoped that would prove to be the case, at least. It would be easier than trying to invent a filtration system from scratch - and faster.

 

“I should be able to program it to filter out the allamite,” he said to Chakotay and Chaya, “but I need to get it to _recognize_ the allamite first.”

 

They were back in the lab again, with the water reclamation system that had been pulled from the guts of the shuttle sitting on the floor of the main room. It had taken five men to carry it to the lab, it was so large.

 

“I can get you the molecular structure,” Chaya said. “It will take our computers about half an hour to do, though.”

 

“That should be enough, if you can manage it,” Tom said.

 

Chakotay went to check on Peval while they waited. Tom joined him.

 

“We need to talk about what we’re going to do once all these modifications are finished,” he said quietly, sitting in the lone chair. Chakotay had perched on Peval’s mattress.

 

“We’re going to do nothing,” Chakotay said, already knowing the answer. “Once the water filtration system is in place and the children are getting uncontaminated food, there’s nothing we can do but wait. If we were in Federation space, we would have access to more advanced medical technology. We would be able to filter out the toxins easily.”

 

“I can only jury-rig so many things,” Tom said quietly. “IV drips are one thing. Blood transfusions and organ transplants are something else entirely.”

 

Chakotay turned to look at him. “You’ve done more than enough. It’s all right. We’ll wait it out.”

 

“It’s the twenty-fourth century. Children shouldn’t die from the equivalent of lead poisoning,” Tom said bitterly.

 

“And parents shouldn’t abandon their children. Sons shouldn’t turn their backs on their fathers. Eighty-year-old men shouldn’t die from heart attacks.” Chakotay cupped Tom’s cheek. His words were gentle. “ _Shouldn’t_ doesn’t carry a lot of meaning, Flyboy.”

 

“Bullshit,” Tom said, though there wasn’t any heat to his words. He took Chakotay’s hand in his own and lowered it to his lap. “Never again, Chakotay. This is where it stops. We learn from this, and it doesn’t happen again.”

 

Chaya returned with the molecular structure for allamite and some news - the eldest of the Cardassian children, Gavek, had slipped into a coma.

 

“He was going to be seventeen next week,” Chakotay said softly.

 

“He still will,” Tom said firmly. “Chaya, do we still have some of that water?”

 

Tom programmed the molecular structure into the water reclamation system, and then configured it so that it would recognize any water that had trace elements of allamite as “waste” that needed to be recycled back into clean water. Chaya poured the container of water she had gathered earlier into the reclamation unit. The filtration process took fifteen minutes from start to finish. When it was finished, Tom scanned it with his tricorder and then ran it through the lab’s computers.

 

“Allamite free,” he said softly. “Near as I can tell, at least.”

 

He picked up the container of water, sniffed it, and then took a small sip.

 

“Well,” he said finally, “I’m not a computer, but I can tell you that _that’s_ what water is supposed to taste like.”

 

\----

 

Installing the water reclamation unit turned out to be the most difficult part of the whole process. The unit was too large for the aquifer, it turned out, and so Tom spent half the night taking it apart and reassembling it in a different configuration so that it was longer than it was wide. Then, once it was installed, they were able to pull about sixty gallons of clean water from the aquifer before the power cell died. Tom had to remove one of the power cells from the replicator in Chakotay’s house, leaving it  performing at seventy-five-percent efficiency, so that he could get the reclamation unit up and running again.

 

By dawn, though, everything was running as smoothly as could be expected. The replicator was put to use once more for breakfast, and colonists were delivering gallons of clean water to the houses of the stricken children.

 

“We need them to start ingesting the uncontaminated food and water as soon as possible,” Tom said. _And hope that it’s not too late_.

 

Chakotay roused Peval, looking visibly relieved when the boy regained consciousness, and got him to eat some eggs and drink some water before he fell asleep again. And even through his all-consuming worry over his child, he still managed to think about the others, and he paid a visit to each family throughout the morning to check on them.

 

Tom moved Peval back to Chakotay’s house. He was in dire need of a shower and Peval would probably be more comfortable in his own bed. Those in charge of the replicator had gone for the afternoon, now that lunchtime had passed. They would be back in a few hours for dinner, and so the house was quiet.

 

Chakotay returned when the replicator crew did, and they all set to work creating the meals and delivering them to the families. The replicator’s matter reserves were dangerously low after that, so Tom spent the rest of the evening using a phaser to cut the different parts of the shuttle into manageable pieces and feeding them into the matter reserves. 

 

And so the days passed. Tom’s life soon became a list - wake up, replicate meals, check on the stricken children, replicate more meals, check on the aquifer, replicate dinners, fall asleep, repeat. He worked alongside Chakotay and Chaya, often into the early hours of the morning. There seemed to never be enough time for everything - not for their work, not for sleep. There was always more to be done.

 

Tom was stealing a few moments of rest on the couch in the living room on the fourth night when Chakotay came into the room after checking on Peval.

 

“Don’t,” he said, putting up a hand as Tom started to sit up and make room for him. He clambered onto the couch and slid behind Tom, gathering him into his arms and breathing a quiet sigh against the back of Tom’s neck. “Sleep.”

 

Tom, already mostly there, didn’t even put up a half-hearted protest for show. It didn’t matter that the couch was too small for the two of them, or that his arm was uncomfortably pinned to his side. He passed out to the sound of Chakotay’s light breathing in his ear, and had the best sleep he’d had in weeks.

 

He woke to the sounds and smells of the replicator in the kitchen going again, and to Chakotay’s soft voice directing the efforts. He was absurdly grateful for the extra two hours of sleep he’d been given and, in his still-groggy state, entertained the idea of walking right into that kitchen and kissing Chakotay senseless.

 

“Dad?”

 

The voices in the kitchen stopped. Tom twisted around on the couch and looked over his shoulder. Peval was standing in the hall, his hair sticking up in all directions and his shirt sleep-rumpled.

 

“Keep working.” Chakotay’s voice drifted out from the kitchen, and then he appeared in the doorway. At the sight of Peval, awake and upright for the first time in days, his face melted into a bright smile. “Hey. How are you feeling?”

 

Peval shrugged and scrubbed a fist across one eye. He finally decided on, “Hungry.”

 

Chakotay laughed and crossed the room to him. Peval allowed himself to be enveloped in a hug, and he pressed his face into Chakotay’s shoulder. Chakotay cupped the back of Peval’s head. Peval murmured something, but his words were muffled by Chakotay’s shoulder and Tom couldn’t make them out. But he heard Chakotay say quietly, “No, no one else died,” and his chest constricted.

 

“So what was wrong with us?” Peval asked later. Freshly-showered and changed, he now sat on the other couch, dutifully eating a plate of replicated food that Chakotay had set in his lap. Tom ran a hand through his own damp hair. The desert air usually dried it in short order.

 

“Nothing was wrong with you. It was the water,” Chakotay said as he came into the room with a PADD. The replicator crews had gone for now. Chakotay sat next to Peval and called up something on the screen. Peval leaned against him, watching. “Tom and Aunt Chaya discovered that the meteoroid strikes last summer were responsible for what’s happening now. See…”

 

Tom leaned back and closed his eyes, letting the conversation wash over him. He didn’t fall asleep, but his mind drifted for a while. When he felt as though an appropriate amount of time had passed, he sat up again and reached for his bag.

 

“Need to make my rounds,” he said quietly to Chakotay, who was now reading a book on the PADD while Peval dozed against his shoulder. Tom leaned down for a brief kiss. “Be back in a few hours.”

 

He found, to his immense relief, that the other half-Cardassian children were like Peval - exhausted, but conscious and mobile. The Cardassian children hadn’t bounced back as quickly, but all of them were at least alert. And Gavek had woken from his coma, which was the final bit of proof Tom needed before he could tentatively admit to himself that their efforts seemed to be paying off.

 

Now that the immediate danger seemed to have passed, they needed to start looking more long-term. Tom went down to the offices of the ruling council and, with their help, found space for the replicator at the schoolhouse.

 

“We won’t need to rely on this once we start to grow uncontaminated crops,” Tom said. “Which brings up another point…”

 

“We need to start constructing greenhouses where we can grow food in an environment where both the water and the soil are free of allamite,” Kiri finished for him. She gave him a smile. “We’re already underway with that plan. By the time winter sets in, we’ll be able to stop using the replicator entirely and have it set aside for emergencies only.”

 

Tom found himself relaxing by inches and returning her smile. “Look at that. You doing my job for me. If I’m not careful, you’re going to render me completely useless here.”

 

“Hardly.” Kiri linked her arm through his and led him back to the entry hall.

 

“Can I ask you something?”

 

“Of course.”

 

In the crisis that followed their discovery that allamite poisoning was ailing the Cardassian children, Tom hadn’t spared even a single moment to think about what had transpired in Tamati’s office. But now he asked, “The bonding ceremony… what does it entail?”

 

“It’s an ancient ceremony,” Kiri said after a short pause. “It's largely spiritual, and it's meant to determine whether or not two souls are meant to walk together - that is, whether or not they are supposed to share this path in life. The couple either is bound together during this experience, or they find that they are not meant to be on this path together and their union is dissolved.”

 

“Oh,” Tom said. “And what if they continue to see each other, and ignore what they, er, discovered about themselves during the ceremony?”

 

“Then the path they have chosen will be fraught with obstacles and tensions, and they will find neither peace nor happiness together,” Kiri said. They had reached the entry hall. She stopped and faced him. “Is this something that concerns you?”

 

“Well, as Tamati has pointed out on multiple occasions, I _am_ an outsider,” Tom said wryly.

 

“There are very few on this colony who subscribe to Tamati’s views,” Kiri said. “And you should not let another’s opinion influence what you _know_ to be right. The way I see it, Tom Paris, you have a man to balance, a child to help look after, and a whole new way of life to learn. Dorvan needs you - and you need it, in ways I don’t think you even fully realize yet. This is your home now, and it’s where you belong.”


	5. Epilogue

 

Dust storms were an annual occurrence on Dorvan V. The worst of them blotted out the sun for weeks and brought the colony to a standstill. Those, Tom had been told, only came around once every ten years or so. The last one had been four years ago, and it had damaged houses all over the colony. Chakotay still hadn’t repaired the shutters on his bedroom windows, which had been loosened by the storm.

 

It was the sound of these shutters creaking in a stiff wind that roused Tom from sleep that morning. At first, his dreams bled into reality and he thought that he was on a swaying ship adrift at sea, but then the room solidified around him. He’d rolled onto his side sometime during the night and his arm hung off the side of the mattress. Rolling over, he saw that Chakotay was asleep on his stomach, head turned away from Tom and both arms shoved underneath his pillow. It was well after dawn, but with planting season six months behind them now and harvest well out of the way, they had no need to be up quite so early.

 

Until there was a crash in the kitchen. Tom winced and Chakotay snapped seamlessly awake. He lay unmoving on the bed, eyes scanning the room, until his surroundings registered with his brain and he visibly relaxed. His three years with the Maquis, despite being a relatively short amount of time, had left him with lifelong instincts, not the least of which was the ability to not startle awake. Years ago, such abrupt movement might have meant instant death.

 

“Your turn,” Chakotay informed him, pulling a pillow over his head and sighing. Tom suppressed a smile and slid out of bed.

 

Peval was in the kitchen, hastily cleaning up shards from a plate that had fallen to the floor. He hesitated when he saw Tom standing in the doorway, and then gave a tentative smile.

 

“Er, sorry,” he whispered. “I was trying to be quiet, I swear.”

 

He’d grown by nearly a head in the six months since Tom had been on Dorvan, and now he almost stood as tall as Chakotay’s shoulder. He still had yet to grow into his long limbs, and he was as clumsy and awkward as any other teenager. Not to mention just as lacking in certain bits of common sense, sometimes.

 

“I know,” Tom said with a reassuring smile. He walked over to the table, where Peval had set his model of _Voyager_ and the small remote that controlled it. He’d constructed the toy from scratch for Peval’s thirteenth birthday – a sort of consolation prize for dismantling his shuttle and, by extension, Peval’s only shot at flying. “Why don’t you take this outside?”

 

“Can’t,” Peval said. The shards of the plate disposed of, he took the model from Tom’s hands and began inspecting it for damage. “It’s raining.”

 

“What?” Tom went over to the windows. In his time on Dorvan, he had yet to see a true rainstorm. There had been misting showers here and there, but nothing substantial. Crops needed to be irrigated because they were never going to get any actual rainfall.

 

But now, he could see that the stiff breeze he had heard earlier had in fact heralded a rainstorm. It was as though the skies had opened up over the desert, and rain fell in white sheets.

 

“Do you hear that?” Tom asked when he was back in the bedroom. He pulled the pillow off of Chakotay’s head and poked him between the shoulders. “Wake up.”

 

Chakotay cracked open one eye to glare at him. “I broke the hand of the last person who did that to me while I was sleeping.”

 

“The last person who tried to wake you was a poor Maquis scout who was trying to alert you about a possible ambush. So good reflexes there, Chief ,” Tom said. “Plus you were already awake, so don’t even try that on me.”

 

Chakotay rolled over and held his hand out for the pillow, which Tom returned. He shoved it under his head and sighed, “What were you saying?”

 

Tom pointed wordlessly to the window. Chakotay followed his gaze, and then he sat up abruptly.

 

“Rain,” he said quietly. He threw back the covers and got up to walk over to the window. “Well. There’s something you don’t see every day.”

 

“I don’t think Chaya predicted this,” Tom said. He joined Chakotay.

 

“She didn’t. I suppose this planet still has some surprises in store for us,” Chakotay said quietly, and there was a thin note of hope in his tone. Just the other week he had finally broached the subject of evacuation with the ruling council. Dorvan was only going to be able to sustain their people for another five years, according to Chaya’s projections. Their options were few. Petitioning Cardassia for help was their best recourse. Disassembling most of the houses and using the materials to construct shuttlecraft from scratch was a fantasy at best, though all options had to be explored.

 

Tom slid his arms around Chakotay’s waist from behind and propped his chin on Chakotay’s shoulder. They watched the rain quietly for a while. It intensified, drumming against the roof and drowning out even the sound of the wind. 

 

“I’ve never seen it like this,” Chakotay said softly. “Though it would have been more useful last summer.”

 

“I thought rain was a good omen among your people, no matter when it occurs.”

 

Chakotay snorted. “Of course water is a good omen when you come from the desert. Look at what it nearly did to us, though.”

 

“Maybe the Spirits are trying to make up for that now,” Tom tried, tightening his hold a little. He didn’t share the unwavering beliefs of Chakotay’s people – and lately, he wasn’t sure Chakotay did, either. So he tried to point out the good signs when he could, no matter how small. It seemed to help.

 

Plus, they were only two weeks out from their bonding ceremony now, meaning that Tom was going to take all the good omens he could find.

 

“What was Peval up to, by the way?”

 

“Oh, breaking more plates.”

 

“Again?” Chakotay let out an amused huff. “I never should have let you give that to him. I should have known better.”

 

“Yes, you should have,” Tom agreed.

 

The rain let up after half an hour of steady downpour, and the sun swiftly broke through and burned away the clouds. It wasn’t long before any lingering dampness evaporated, and soon it was though the rain had never happened in the first place. And then, something completely unexpected happened.

 

The desert bloomed.

 

The shrubs that dotted the landscape came to life under the glare of the hot sun, sprouting tiny white and gold flowers that turned their faces to the sky and stood out starkly against the red dirt. These flowers blanketed the valley, stretching as far as the eye could see. Tom shielded his eyes from the sun with one hand and stared across the landscape in disbelief.

 

“Yeah, that’ll happen,” Chakotay said, coming up beside him. They were finally getting around to repairing the shutters – Chakotay had put it off long enough. “They’ll be gone again by nightfall.”

 

“They always bloom so quickly?”

 

“Only after a heavy rain,” Chakotay said. “Otherwise, you’d never see them at all.”

 

“I know some botanists who would _love_ to get their hands on plants like that,” Tom said with a shake of his head. And then he turned a crooked smile on Chakotay. “So can we count this as another good omen?”

 

Chakotay snorted.

 

“You’re the only good omen I need, Flyboy,” he said, leaning in for a kiss. Tom turned his head away and raised an eyebrow at him.

 

“Really, _that’s_ the line you’re going to go with?”

 

“Shut up and kiss me.”

 

And Tom did.

 

 


End file.
